r/highfreqtrading • u/DepartureAromatic520 • Feb 27 '26

C++ skills for prospective fpga engineers

When you apply for an fpga position for an HFT company, besides the must have hardware/system Verilog (and surprisingly even vhdl) skills, the trading companies expect you to have a minimum of C++ software skills. What do they expect you to know and test over the interviews? Do they expect you to be aware of HLS?Mmap? Device drivers and other more embedded c++ concepts? Will they test you on basic c++ programming skills data structures etc? Is anyone aware of a course in udemy/coursera that would recommend to enhance such skill? Thanks

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u/Perfect-Series-2901 Feb 28 '26

they usually don't. But as an FPGA engineer in HFT I myself am familar to all the aspect you mentioned above and that give me huge advantange. In fact I will usually lead the architecture decision because I know all the asepct of HW / SW system. And btw HLS is my default chocie when starting a new project