Career advice: Transitioning from UX Design to Quant Finance?

[Glass_Robot]

So I'm currently 28M and working as a UX designer at a large media org in the UK but truth be told I'm really bored of the job and the pay isn't great (~ £40k). The work is quite tedious, not particularly intellectually stimulating and ultimately isn't all that creative so I'm wanting to change paths before I sink more time into my current one. My educational background is a BA in Industrial Design and Technology. Prior to that I did my a-levels in Maths, Physics and Product Design. I got a good grade for product design (potentially why I decided on pursuing it at uni and also at the time I thought I wanted to do something 'creative'?) but I did quite badly in Maths and Physics. I was later diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety and realised it had negatively affected my academic performance during my GCSEs through to A-levels. I know the grades I got are in no way an accurate representation of my abilities (I'm also waiting to get an AuADHD assessment) and am far more capable in maths and physics but at the end of the day the poor grades are what I have. I'm by no means a maths savant but I know if I set my focus on something and have a clear goal in mind I can achieve it.

I've been working with software devs and Data Scientists at my current role and have gotten really enamoured with the work they do and the technical aspects of it all. It's really made me miss doing maths and I've been teaching myself Python, R, statistics tests/analyses and some front-end frameworks (more so to compliment my UX work than being related to Soft. Dev. or Data Science). And basically I've come to the late realisation that I would much rather be doing something technical and intellectually stimulating. I have some friends from school who are now working in Finance doing some form of quant finance roles (quant dev/quant analyst/risk) and hearing them talk about their work was really interesting - they have backgrounds in Maths, Physics and Engineering and one went to Oxford to study Physics.
I'm currently thinking of doing a second bachelors in Maths and Stats but financially I wouldn't be able to leave work and do another 3 yr undergrad full-time. So I'm planning on doing a 4yr part-time BSc at Birkbeck, uni of London. I was then planning on following this up with a Masters in Quantitative Finance/Mathematics and Finance from a prestigious uni, Imperial do this very MSc with the option to do it part-time too. How much would school attended factor in for these roles (i.e. would the Birkbeck bachelors put me at a disadvantage even if I were to manage to obtain a 1st?)

I guess my main question is would I be at a disadvantage applying for quant jobs around the age of 34? (dev or analyst... would like to pursue quant research but appreciate a PhD would be needed here), given all in it would take about 6 years to complete and be very costly financially(~£60k with 40 of that being for the masters - might be slightly higher accounting for inflationary increases). Any other tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

TLDR; Not happy as a UX Designer, want to move into a more technical & intellectually challenging career and ultimately want to earn much more money. Was considering Quant Finance but if age and prestige of school + exceptional grades are a blocker then would also be open to a move into Data Science, Data Engineer and/or ML engineering. I had also been made aware of Quant UX Researchers recently, who seem to essentially be Data Scientists but domain focused on UI/UX outputs and behavioural insights - but these roles seem to only occur in US markets.

 

[Simon Chiu]

I wouldn't say go back to school to do another degree.
The foundations you build through your engineering degree should be more than enough.
If anything see how many courses you can transfer and try to get it done in 1 year - if not possible I'd say do a bootcamp.

Essentially you need some validator that you can do the job of a SWE or data scientist.
This can come in the form of an internship, projects you've done, simply a bootcamp or some type of certification

The hardest part is taking that first step into the space, especially in quant which is such a niche field.
If you were planning to try for quant it'll definitely be much harder, but not impossible.

My roadmap if I were you and really wanted to do quant would be to get a SWE role first, as its a good first step.
From there decide if you're looking for a trader/researcher/dev position.

Based on that I'd start contributing to open source projects related to quant, building your own projects in the space (Monte Carlo option pricing?) and then competing in competitions hosted by firms (e.g IMC Prosperity)

Don't let your age be a barrier to you trying, I'm sure you could do it.
I don't think your school would matter much if you do well in other aspects.

Best of luck!

 

[Glass_Robot]

I wouldn't say go back to school to do another degree.
The foundations you build through your engineering degree should be more than enough.
If anything see how many courses you can transfer and try to get it done in 1 year - if not possible I'd say do a bootcamp.

Essentially you need some validator that you can do the job of a SWE or data scientist.
This can come in the form of an internship, projects you've done, simply a bootcamp or some type of certification

The hardest part is taking that first step into the space, especially in quant which is such a niche field.
If you were planning to try for quant it'll definitely be much harder, but not impossible.

My roadmap if I were you and really wanted to do quant would be to get a SWE role first, as its a good first step.
From there decide if you're looking for a trader/researcher/dev position.

Based on that I'd start contributing to open source projects related to quant, building your own projects in the space (Monte Carlo option pricing?) and then competing in competitions hosted by firms (e.g IMC Prosperity)

Don't let your age be a barrier to you trying, I'm sure you could do it.
I don't think your school would matter much if you do well in other aspects.

Best of luck!

Thanks so much for the reply and recommendations Simon, much appreciated!

I am currently working on transitioning into a SWE role so that's good to hear that it'd be the most logical first step.

Would you have any certification recommendations per chance? No worries if not!

I suppose I only asked about school prestige because in London at least, it does seem to be that firms are screening by school not just skills and experience and presumed that'd put me at a disadvantage.

Again, I think quant (dev - seems the best fit coming from SWE) is something I would absolutely love the opportunity to do but fully aware with it being so niche that it might be unlikely I make it in. In which case I think I'd be happy moving further into the SWE/DS/MLEng path, which I imagine would be just as intellectually stimulating.

Thanks again!