Quantitative Finance: I would like to switch my career from a Computer Scientist to a Financial Engineer. What should I do?

The responses below are spot on. 1) figure out what you want to do 2) get your foot in the door and 3) leverage your skills and network If you have a background in data mining, chances are you are already very marketable in finance careers. So my advice to you is three-fold: 1. Get a better understanding of what finance careers entail. You can do this by network, and by reading a lot. I wrote some of my favorite finance books in this post: http://tapwage.com/cheatsheets/2015/05/01/5-must-read-books-as-you-start-your-finance-career 2. Start looking at business / finance roles that leverage your data and analytical skill set. These can take many shapes and forms. Some can be "product manager" roles at financial technology startups, some can be quantitative marketing roles. These can be lucrative, business oriented roles that you could do right away. I have compiled a list of such jobs for you here: http://tapwage.com/channel/data-driven-mbas-at-startups (many of these are for engineers as well) 3. You can also look at various investment firms and banks and see the types of junior roles they have. Many are open to non-finance backgrounds and are actually very open to engineers. Here are list of potential roles you could look at: http://tapwage.com/channel/beginning-on-the-buyside An important caveat - if and when you decide to recruit at big investment management firms and banks, you have to well versed in finance (read a lot! and meet a lot of people). In general, hiring managers want to see a passion for the field, and the only way you can express that is by truly understanding what financial engineers do on a day-to-day basis. I would strongly recommend having also having a grasp on economic matters and an articulate and concise view on the markets, interest rates, fed actions, etc. This is a further demonstration that as an engineer, you are ready and interested to move to the world of finance. Good luck, and if you have further questions - ping me at

Step back and figure out what it is that you really want to do. If your goal is to just make money, and you don't care how, you are better off *not* switching careers from a computer scientist to a financial engineer, but rather try to see about getting a job as a computer scientist in a bank. The thing about banks is that they hire massive numbers of computer programmers, and if you have a CS background, you are much more likely to get hired by a big bank on the basis of your computer skills than on your finance background.  One thing reason for this is that technical people are hired on the basis of their computer skill, whereas non-technical people are hired on the basis of their social skills and the strength of their social network.  If you want to do finance for the sake of finance, it's still easier to get hired as a computer programmer in a big bank and then move laterally.

First you need to figure out what you want to do. Financial engineers work in various fields: risk management, pricing/modeling, trading, etc. Based on what you believe you will enjoy doing, you will be able to determine how to get that job. To find out more about the field you can attend various networking events, seminars, read quant blogs, talk to people in the industry, or those in charge of any of the FinEng programs.   The fastest way for you to break into quant finance is to leverage your programming skills and get into algo trading as already mentioned. Algo trading engineers however are also further divided into specialists who work on low-level connectivity programming and those who devise trading algorithms. The two require in-depth knowledge of different areas of computer science.  On the other hand, if you are more interested in pure quantitative modeling or complex derivatives trading you will most likely need a PhD degree in hard science. Majority of MFE grads end up working in quantititative risk. Therefore knowing which field of financial engineering you want to be in is essential.

has the right idea. Network, apply for jobs, tell everyone you are making a change until you find that first job in the field. Many companies in the financial field - banks, hedge funds, prop trading firms, and so forth - hire computer scientists and engineers who do not have a formal background or experience in finance. Getting that first job will be the hardest, but once you have worked in the field, that experience will work in your favor.

MS-finance is a great combination for candidate to demonstrate the best of software and finance skills, hence they are in high demand.  MS-finance is done my candidates with no or minimal work experience. This does make sense to gain deep technical and financial skills to apply them in real-world in quick time.Many of the top 15 have good opportunities for hands-on experience and some of the leading companies do hire these graduates resulting in good ROI. For a comprehensive profile evaluation, do reach out to us at http://www.admitpitch.com/services/free-consulting

Get your resume forwarded through your friends who already are doing related jobs. You never know which companies has opening of which kind. Who knows, maybe right now they are looking for the exact same profile as yours in candidates!

I think if you want to be a millionare within your 30's, then I would recomend you to take a career in finance rather than CS.the average starting pay for a Quant or a Financial Engineer is around $100,000