Is a software engineering job the only way to go after completing Masters in Computer Science?

Another approach: become a sales engineer.  At my company, our product is a library, which programmers buy to increase their productivity.  We don't sell it by showing off a flashy GUI.  We sell it by talking to programmers about programming, and how our product will help their programming efforts.  An ex-shoe sales person can NOT sell our product, it needs to be somebody with programming experience. Working with our customers can be very interesting and exciting.  I did it for several years, and I miss many aspects of it.  You need to have technical skills, or the customers will write you off as "just a sales weasel".  Once you earn their respect, they really appreciate the help you give them.  Best of all, you can give them the "high-level" approaches without having to do the detailed implementation work (which is where it can get boring). I stopped doing it partly due to the travel required.  If you don't mind travel, sales engineering can be a good, well-paying job.

No, there are other jobs, off the top of my head: Project management Product management System administration Quality assurance Logistics Product marketing You probably can get a job in fin tech company working on an algorithmic trading platform, but you will likely be doing software engineering.Whether any of the other jobs is exciting to you, only you can determine. One man’s meat is another man’s poison.