Hello everyone, I’m a SWE looking to move to quant. I see a lot of quants looking to transition to SWE roles. Please let me know if anybody wants to connect. We can exchange resources and help each other. If anyone is interested kindly send me a direct message #corpfinance #finance #tech #quant
Quant generally tend to move towards modeling roles or Data Science in Tech companies. Pay in tech companies is obviously at the higher end with a much much better WLB
During the COVID days for sure. Not sure about now with the state of the tech job market. Contrary to popular but false beliefs, most quants don't make 7 figure or even high 6 figures. Only those in top funds/pods in an extremely good year do. And most years aren't extremely good. A quant researcher with a few years of exp could easily land an L5/6 in FAANG, and with the RSU appreciation beat out his/her average comp in finance while working significantly less hours. Or better yet, joined a late stage startup and actually get 7 figure upon ipo. Quite a few of my peers did that and landed pretty well.
But how do they know it will soon get IPO? They might leave before it’s happening.
I think quant firms look for 2 things, an iq measure (top tier undergrad, top tier degree PhD phy, iit ranks, coding competition elo, Olympiads, literal "aptitude" test), and quant knowledge (can be quant like projects, strong mathematical skills, quant or quant adj experience like working swe in finance companies like deshaw) Show them these two things in your resume. I think GS experience is a plus. Add a few quant like projects, i.e. predict eSports, real sports, setup a data collection pipeline, complex event processing. You can also try the route of quant dev and then quant
Can I DM you to connect and when I make projects ask you if they’re good enough? Let me know if you provide mentorship and guidance
Sure but I'm not really a quant myself more of a quant dev type
Transit to a strat within GS first, that should open the door to buyside later
Yeah then move along bud 😂😂.Your efforts to be edgy have failed .
SWE to SWE, sure. SWE to algo dev? sure. SWE to quantitative trader? you better have a model of the market already and shitting out perfect 15% YOY returns.
There are interview prep books. Green one is good. Do leetcode, know all details of modern c++ (surprisingly important) Study stats (mostly linear algebra, some ML is plus) Should be familiar with linear algebra and basic math. That’s pretty much all you need. Will take some months to refresh all of it though.
Job descriptions/titles are almost placeholders in many places. “Quants” do dev work all the time, which is not a bad thing at all. That being said, generally longer the trading horizon the more separation engineering tends to get from quant side. Seems like you want to be P&L generating quant. In that case probably higher chance to go to high frequency shops. There everybody just codes, whether you’re in core tech, strategy, or alpha. Alphas are a bit more data science-ish, strategy a bit more programming-ish but mostly they are just coding (low headcount trying to cover huge universe forces everybody to code, signals are mathematically simpler but programmatically harder to deliver) for high AUM longer horizon hedge funds some devs will likely be somewhat insulated from trading itself, which again may not be a bad thing but seems like doesn’t fit your purpose.
Thank you so much, I will study all of this :). This is a very helpful comment
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I’m a swe at a smaller quant fund so not sure how much this is true across the industry. But at least at my company they look for understanding of some of the latest research in finance. Tend to only hire people with a math background from Ivy leagues. I wanted to be a quant here and have a ms in applied math but they wouldn’t even consider me since I didn’t go to an Ivy League/have research experience
Yah, and not just Ivy League degrees. Many HFTs and funds have a hard requirement for a PhD for actual quant roles. Not all of them, but maybe something like 50% of them.
what are the requirements to be a low latency dev there though?
I’m a quant in sell side, wanna transit to buy. Let’s connect :)
For sure :)
I'm actually considering this myself. I'm thinking of taking a more traditional route, going back to school. If you're in NYC, NYU, Baruch, Columbia and CMU NYC campus all have good programs. I'm probably going part time and get a feel of the field first before committing full time in school. I'm also lucky in the sense that I work closely with quants day to day. I can learn from them, and try to move internally instead of finding a new job. Plus, if I am a bad quant, I'm already a decent software engineer so I can continue on my current career path, which I don't necessarily hate but am getting bored of.
That’s awesome, do you already have a master’s or you’ll go to grad school for quant finance?
I have a master's in CS. This will be the second master's. NYU has a graduate certificate which might be easier to finish (just course work) provided there's a clearer path to moving internally (in which case education matters slightly less because I will already have a foot in the door ).
Never met a quant trying to transition to a SWE role, and I’ve met a lot of quants.
I just saw a few posts on blind stating that they do. But hey if you’re happy at your current job, good for you👍
Bruh what 😂 coming from millennium is hilarious since I’ve heard nightmare WLB stories. I work in quant dev and am trying to transition to HPC / faang.