TL;DR — How Specialist HFT Recruiters Evaluate FPGA and Network Engineers FPGA and network engineers are not support functions in HFT. They sit directly in the trading path — and a weak hire in either role can silently leak edge even when the strategy is sound. FPGA engineers build hardware-level logic for ultra-low-latency processing: market data parsing, order encoding, timestamping, and risk checks. Network engineers remove friction from the data path: kernel bypass, NIC tuning, DPDK, multicast, and latency measurement. Both roles require production experience, not just theoretical knowledge. In India 2026, mid-level FPGA and network engineers command ₹1.5–2.8 crore. Senior architects with HFT production experience can earn ₹2.5–4.5 crore. The right assessment process covers four rounds: technical knowledge, system design, hands-on task, and production incident analysis. One interview round is never enough for these roles. The biggest hiring mistakes: treating FPGA and network as generic infrastructure roles, hiring academics without production exposure, and assessing theory without practical tasks. This guide covers the full evaluation framework — rubrics, sample assessment tasks, red flags, green flags, salary bands, and hiring decision criteria — for both roles. The Hardware Bottleneck – Why FPGA and Network Engineers Define HFT Success In high-frequency trading,