Career Roadmap — 2025 → 2027

WBD → Optiver
or Google.

An 18-month plan to move from Software Engineer II at Warner Bros. Discovery into a mid-level role at a quant firm or FAANG. Built around DSA, systems-level C++, probability, and one measurable win in production.

18 Months
3 Phases
400+ Target problems
€250k Ceiling (quant, strong year)
01 The three phases
Phase 1 Foundation
Months 1 – 6 ▲
DSA
Neetcode 75 → 150
1–2 problems daily. Arrays, hashing, two pointers, sliding window, stack, binary search. Focus on understanding, not memorising — solve, explain in plain English, delete, redo next day.
Quant firms and FAANG both require strong algorithmic fluency. This is the baseline admission ticket — you cannot skip it.
C++
Finish data-structures repo
Linked list, stack, queue, hash map, BST, heap — all from scratch, no STL.
Learn the memory model
Stack vs heap, RAII, smart pointers, move semantics. Where C++ diverges from TypeScript.
Build: thread pool
Fixed-size thread pool using std::thread, mutex, and condition variable.
Quant firms live in C++. You need to go beyond syntax to ownership semantics and concurrency — the things that actually matter in low-latency systems.
Math
Probability basics
Conditional probability, Bayes' theorem, expectation, variance, common distributions. One chapter per 2–3 weeks. Slow is fine.
Optiver/IMC SWE interviews contain probability puzzles. You will be asked to reason about expected value and distributions. Non-negotiable for quant.
WBD — day job
Find a latency problem
Profile the search service. Identify a bottleneck. Own the fix end-to-end.
Instrument and measure
"Reduced p99 from Xms to Yms" is gold on a CV. Before/after numbers are everything.
One measurable performance improvement at a recognisable company is worth more than any side project. This is what makes quant firms read your CV twice.
Resources
Neetcode.io — roadmap Introduction to Probability — Blitzstein & Hwang (free PDF) A Tour of C++ — Stroustrup cppreference.com Back to Basics — CppCon YouTube The Cherno C++ series — YouTube
Milestone 1

End of month 6: 150 Neetcode problems solved and explainable without notes. Data structures repo complete. Thread pool working. Two chapters of Blitzstein done. One measurable perf win at WBD on your CV.

Phase 2 Specialisation
Months 7 – 12 ▼
DSA
Neetcode 150 → 300
Trees, graphs, heap/priority queue, intervals, greedy, dynamic programming — DP separates mid from senior. Start timed solves: 25-minute timer, read approach on stuck, never read code.
DP is the single most important pattern for FAANG interviews. Graphs matter equally for quant systems work. This phase closes the gap from "studying" to "interview-ready".
C++
Build: lock-free queue
Single-producer single-consumer lock-free queue using atomics and memory ordering.
Learn templates & concepts
Generic programming, template specialisation, SFINAE basics, C++20 concepts.
Read: Effective Modern C++
Scott Meyers. The 42 items that separate a C++ user from a C++ engineer.
Lock-free data structures are the bread and butter of low-latency quant systems. Building one shows you understand memory ordering — something most candidates cannot do.
Math
Continue Blitzstein
Law of large numbers, CLT, Markov chains, simulation.
Brainteaser practice
Optiver/IMC ask these. "Expected number of flips to get HH." Work through 2–3 per week.
Probability brainteasers are a filter at quant firms specifically. Preparation here has outsized return — most candidates are unprepared.
Domain
Build: simple order book
Price-time priority matching engine in C++. Limit orders, market orders, cancellations. The most impactful project for quant applications.
Read: Trading and Exchanges
Larry Harris. Understand market microstructure — what an order book is, how prices form, what latency means in a market context.
An order book project in C++ signals to Optiver/IMC that you understand their domain. Most applicants have no idea what a matching engine is. You will.
Resources
Effective Modern C++ — Scott Meyers Trading and Exchanges — Larry Harris Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability — Mosteller CppCon: "Lock-free programming" — Herb Sutter Blitzstein (continued) Neetcode.io — DP playlist
Milestone 2

End of month 12: 300 Neetcode problems. Lock-free queue implemented and understood. Order book project on GitHub with a written README explaining design decisions. Blitzstein finished. Able to solve basic probability brainteasers without hints.

Phase 3 Application ready
Months 13 – 18 ▼
DSA
300 → 400+ problems
Revisit failures. Hard problems. Bit manipulation, tries, advanced graphs (Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, union-find).
Mock interviews weekly
Pramp, interviewing.io, or a study partner. Talking while coding is a different skill from solving silently.
By this point you want to be executing, not learning. Mock interviews expose the gap between knowing a solution and performing it under pressure.
C++ & Systems
Profiling and optimisation
Learn perf, valgrind, cachegrind. Profile your order book. Optimise the hot path. Know what cache misses are and why they cost nanoseconds.
Optional: Go at WBD
If opportunity arises, get involved with the Go services. Breadth matters for FAANG; depth for quant.
Being able to profile and explain performance characteristics of your own code is a senior-level signal. At quant firms, this is table stakes.
Interview prep
System design (FAANG)
Design a search service (relevant!), rate limiter, distributed cache. Know consistent hashing, CAP theorem, replication.
Behavioural (both)
STAR stories for: ownership, technical disagreement, performance optimisation, mentorship.
System design is half the FAANG interview. Your WBD experience is genuinely strong material here — but it needs deliberate framing, not just a CV line.
Applications
Month 14–15: IMC first
Slightly more accessible than Optiver at mid-level. Use it to calibrate the real interview standard.
Month 15–16: Optiver + Google
After IMC experience regardless of outcome.
Safety net: Booking.com, Adyen
Apply in parallel. Strong profile fit. Do not neglect these.
Sequencing matters. IMC first gives you real quant interview experience and feedback before you use your Optiver shot.
Resources
System Design Interview — Alex Xu (vol 1 & 2) interviewing.io — mock interviews Pramp — peer mock interviews perf + valgrind — C++ profiling Glassdoor — Optiver/IMC interview reports Levels.fyi — comp verification NL
Milestone 3

End of month 18: 400+ problems. Order book profiled and optimised. System design confident. 5+ mock interviews done. IMC application submitted. CV shows one measurable perf win at WBD + working C++ order book with profiling data. Ready.

02 Compensation expectations — Netherlands
Company Base Variable Total (est.) vs. today Accessibility
Optiver / IMC €90 – 120k 50 – 150% base
profit share		 €150 – 250k+
strong year		 +76 – 194% Stretch
Google Amsterdam €100 – 130k RSUs + 15% bonus €140 – 200k +65 – 135% Stretch
Booking.com €80 – 105k RSUs + ~15% €100 – 140k +18 – 65% Likely
Adyen €85 – 110k 10 – 15% bonus €95 – 125k +12 – 47% Achievable now
WBD (today) €85k 12% bonus ~€95k total — —

Note: quant bonus figures are volatile. Optiver had exceptional 2022–23 and softer 2024. A weak market year could mean 20–30% rather than 100%+. That variance is the trade-off versus Google's stable RSU vesting.

03 The one rule

Build things that are hard to fake. A working lock-free queue. A profiled order book. A measured latency improvement in production. These are not things you can vibe-code into existence — and that is exactly the point.

— Roadmap principle, April 2026