FPGA engineer

You design the custom computer chips that let a trading firm's systems react to markets in tiny fractions of a second.

The seat is an FPGA Engineer at Headlands Tech, which runs automated trading. An FPGA is a chip whose circuits can be programmed for one job, so it can process market data and send orders far faster than ordinary software. You design and test these circuits and make the designs work across the firm's systems around the world.