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Can you have a career in finance as an engineer with Python and without C/C++ (professional) experience? Your post really made think it, it's an attractive are

Can you have a career in finance as an engineer with Python and without C/C++ (professional) experience? Your post really made think it, it's an attractive area to work in.

urban_winter 5y ago
Yes. Many adverts will specify financial services experience but it's worth applying anyway. You'll probably find that roles in back-office technology areas (operations, finance etc) are less demanding in this respect. I hired mostly from outside the financial services industry because other industries had, on average, better-skilled developers, lower salaries and better development practices.
simonh 5y ago
Also consider Application Support. I know it's not sexy rockstar dev stuff, but if you can get into App Support on the Quartz (or Athena I suppose) environments you get a dev account and access to all the tools. You can view all the code, config and running systems. If you have a good relationship with your dev team you can submit patches e.g. to improve logging. The live log files of all your applications are just a URL away. If you're up for it, you'll spend a significant amount of time in the Quartz IDE. There are teams within App Support that develop monitoring and compliance reporting tools in Qz and do about 50% development. I know because I ran one. One of my team transferred into our dev team.
twic 5y ago
Yes. Tons of it is in Java.
MagnumOpus 5y ago
Absolutely yes. Depending on what kind of engineer, it is far better to go to the finance (front office quant, back office risk) side than the tech support side. They are less snobbish about autodidacts and pay is far better if you are willing to learn about things outside the dev sandbox. (Our front office has a few quants and ex-quants with electric engineering background, I don't know of any software engineers there.)
- odiroot 5y ago
  Thanks for detailed pointers. What's the deal with front/back offices?
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Rule of thumb: the closer to the business (ie front office), the more money and stress. (Front office deals with clients, and in this context comprises sales, trading, structuring. Middle office run control functions, reporting, risk, compliance, etc. Back office would be settlement, accounting, operations, etc.)

Can you have a career in finance as an engineer with Python and without C/C++ (professional) experience? Your post really made think it, it's an attractive area to work in.

urban_winter 5y ago

Yes. Many adverts will specify financial services experience but it's worth applying anyway. You'll probably find that roles in back-office technology areas (operations, finance etc) are less demanding in this respect. I hired mostly from outside the financial services industry because other industries had, on average, better-skilled developers, lower salaries and better development practices.

simonh 5y ago

Also consider Application Support. I know it's not sexy rockstar dev stuff, but if you can get into App Support on the Quartz (or Athena I suppose) environments you get a dev account and access to all the tools. You can view all the code, config and running systems. If you have a good relationship with your dev team you can submit patches e.g. to improve logging. The live log files of all your applications are just a URL away. If you're up for it, you'll spend a significant amount of time in the Quartz IDE. There are teams within App Support that develop monitoring and compliance reporting tools in Qz and do about 50% development. I know because I ran one. One of my team transferred into our dev team.

twic 5y ago

Yes. Tons of it is in Java.

MagnumOpus 5y ago

Absolutely yes. Depending on what kind of engineer, it is far better to go to the finance (front office quant, back office risk) side than the tech support side. They are less snobbish about autodidacts and pay is far better if you are willing to learn about things outside the dev sandbox. (Our front office has a few quants and ex-quants with electric engineering background, I don't know of any software engineers there.)

odiroot 5y ago
Thanks for detailed pointers. What's the deal with front/back offices?
- FabHK 5y ago
  Rule of thumb: the closer to the business (ie front office), the more money and stress. (Front office deals with clients, and in this context comprises sales, trading, structuring. Middle office run control functions, reporting, risk, compliance, etc. Back office would be settlement, accounting, operations, etc.)