The desk-aligned dev spot is a tough one to land. If you’re not hailing from CalTech, MIT, et al, I suggest the highest-probability strategy is an indirect one: get a client-facing job at hedge fund administrator, get great at Excel+vba; over-deliver for the fund’s CFO and/or traders in all their post-trade questions (that’s why Excel+vba expertise is important: it’s easy to deploy to them as just an Excel file); get recruited. The right spot at a fund administrator is much less competitive, and you get an opportunity to impress the same people you would if you were hired directly onto a desk.

Excel+vba is an odd beast because, nowadays, it's rarely seen as a differentiating skill -- it's not taken seriously -- and yet on almost any trading desk there is an infinite series of todo's where Excel+vba is just the right tool for the job.

Something called "Desk Developer", "Deskdev", "Rapid Application Development" or "RAD".

I was in the Deskdev team in an investment bank for 4 years, great fun and I learned a lot about Excel.