For the context for those who are not in the industry, there are many branches of algorithmic trading: portfolio optimisation, high-frequency trading, technical analysis and so on. All of them are very different from each other, needing different skillsets. Only minority is “flashboys” style high-frequency trading with shorter cables, C++ and FPGA devices. A lot can be accomplished just by figuring out daily and monthly asset price movements.
If you are interested in algorithmic trading, have some Python and Pandas background, I published a tutorial this week that goes in detail about how to develop algorithms, trading strategies in this case, where does the excessive profit comes from and how to backtest your trading ideas:
https://tradingstrategy.ai/blog/outperfoming-eth
For very simple strategies, PhD in math and statistics is unnecessary (albeit helpful).