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I am submitting applications to entry level Quantitative Developer positions. I come from the mathematical finance side but can code in C++ with simple concurrency. Many of the job postings I see mention that a background in operating systems or networking is a plus, and many Glassdoor interview questions mention being asked about networking and operating systems.

The fields of operating systems and networking are huge; there are so many technologies involved. I suspect entry level HFT may not require the full scope of these subjects covered in standard textbooks, and that HFT may require field-specific knowledge that is not sufficiently covered in these textbooks.

I'm willing to spend up to 20 hours learning about operating systems and networking if it improves my chances of being hired. Are there any good resources on the subjects that, if read (or watched), would allow me to claim "operating system" and "networking" knowledge on my resume, and answer common questions my interviewer may ask me in an entry-level HFT interview?

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  • $\begingroup$ I am not involved in HFT, but my impression is they are looking for people with experience in writing network drivers in Unix, i.e. the low level code that services messages. Not so much conceptual knowledge but coding skills. $\endgroup$
    – nbbo2
    Mar 19, 2022 at 10:56
  • $\begingroup$ You don’t need to know all operating systems, only Linux, nor all networking, only IP-based stuff, for the most part. You should know the diff btw TCP and UDP and the advantages and disadvantages of each. You should know the rough timescales of every sort of IO, from L1 cache to WAN. You should know what sorts of operations result in system calls, why you might want to avoid them and what alternatives there are. You should know how different data structures are or are not efficient to use in low-latency environments and why. You should understand how hardware is mapped to abstractions, and why $\endgroup$
    – experquisite
    Jan 1 at 6:43

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