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I would start by getting industry experience and understanding how some of these trading firms are businesses, not speculative machines. From that understanding, you should be able to have a better idea of where algos might provide some sustainable value.

Source: I was offered a spot at CTC, wound up at a large bank. Maybe the better wording would be, "truly understand market making and market mechanics, and where improvements there could be valuable, and then see if algos could solve that problem." Algos have solved lots of problems but when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Technology was the limiting factor in markets for awhile, and right now the technology isn't the bottleneck, it's the politics and the people - see Bitcoin. But before you go full Marc Andressen, remember that finance is fundamentally about using the massive trust and resource allocation system within the human society, and so to think every valuable problem in the space can be solved by an algo may be dated thinking.