3 Financial Engineering Careers: A Guide To Graduates
The job role of a financial engineer has become very common in various financial industries,
such as stock trading, hedge funds, and venture capital funds. Financial engineers have
degree-level qualifications in the field of finance, mathematics, and computer science and are
highly proficient. They are experts that are constantly in demand in the fields of investing and
wealth management.
Financial engineers use mathematic evaluation to create financial models used to solve a range
of financial issues. Financial engineers often have generous salaries due to the highly
competitive nature of the role. Financial engineering is also known as quantitative finance.
How To Learn Financial Engineering
As quantitative finance is usually quite difficult to break into, a university degree in computer
science, mathematics, or finance is a start for any person wanting to become a financial
engineer.
However, for those wanting to truly learn everything there is to know about the world of
quantitative finance, a financial engineering course such as the CQF (Certificate of
Quantitative Finance) is the ideal method. The CQF can be completed online in just six months,
with flexible learning options up to three years. This means that any potential learners with
responsibilities such as childcare or current employment can work at their own pace, with plenty
of flexibility.
Careers That Use Financial Engineering
Portfolio Managers & Traders
Financial engineers with trading and portfolio management backgrounds often work for wealth
management firms, insurance brokers pension companies, stockbrokers, and investment banks.
They supervise the management of portfolios for clients. A portfolio management role is usually
liable for all parts of investment portfolios.
Portfolio management firms need financial engineers. A portfolio of assets is a collection of
constantly changing assets. If the portfolio contains derivative securities as well as stocks, there
may be complicated connections between them. The objective of a portfolio manager is to track
an index or to outperform a benchmark.
To understand these relationships, a large amount of data is essential. Modern devices offer the
ability to collect substantial quantities of data about the history of assets, media events,
inventories of companies whose stock belongs to the portfolio and a hundred other different
information variables that a financial engineer must keep track of.
Equity Research
Equity researchers analyse stocks in a way to assist their business make intelligent investment
choices. Equity researchers often use problem-solving skills, data analysis, and financial
engineering to recognise a certain security’s outlook. This usually includes evaluating a specific
stock’s statistical data in relation to market activity.
Venture Capital Firms
Venture capital firms deal mainly with new companies and fund them in the hopes that they
strike gold with the start-up, and they become one of the next biggest corporations. This is risky
work however, as most start-up companies tend to go bust, especially in the fintech space. This
is where financial engineers come in handy, they can analyse all the available data and make
assertations of whether investing in a certain start-up is a smart business decision.