The gruelling, lucrative financial tech jobs which are growing in Singapore & Hong Kong

FPGA engineering jobs in finance can be mightily hard to recruit for. The talent pool is limited due to both the high bar firms have for their hardware talent, and the divisive nature of the role due to its unpopular programming language. In APAC, the hardware engineering talent pool is even smaller.

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"The chances of finding a top FPGA engineer in APAC are limited," one headhunter who asked to remain anonymous told us.

This is a problem. Aiden Pestell, head of front office technology for search Odin Partners in APAC, says demand is "growing," particularly in Asia.

However, recruiting FPGA people in Hong Kong and Singapore often requires bringing people into the region. Pestell says talent typically comes from Europe. - "We saw more high-frequency trading (HFT) firms relocate European FPGA developers in the past 12 months than from the US." This is predominantly due to the region offering safer jobs with lower taxes, but talent is also untapped in some countries. Josef Chen, a hardware tech startup founder, said in a blog last year that there are a "generation of engineering prodigies whose talents are being squandered" in the UK. 

Asian FPGA jobs can be lucrative. Manuella Supiot, founder of recruiting firm CRX, says that for FPGA roles in Asia, "salaries are high, comparable to America." At the upper echelon, this can mean upwards of six figures. European FPGA engineers relocating to the US is also "very rare" due to the lengthy visa process, making APAC opportunities the most viable for European FPGA engineers looking to move.

Market knowledge helps. Pestell says FPGA developers covering Asian markets is "priority number one" among HFTs in APAC, and that candidates with experience in the Indian options market are "the most in-demand."

However, multiple recruiters suggested that Australia has the strongest talent pool in the region due to the presence of large firms like Optiver there. That newer entrants to the FPGA space like Qube Research are building offices there too might further the divide. Pestell, says that India similarly has "big pools" of talent.

The hardest challenge seems to be finding FPGA developers that enjoy the job. Verilog, the usual language for FPGA development, is thought to be "baroque" by its users, and conducive to very buggy code.

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