Seeking career advice for an incoming FinMath student

[hbbbca]

A quick intro about myself, I am going to a FinMath master's program, and I know most students go to positions like quant analytics, quant trader, or other quant-related positions. All these jobs are presumably coding heavy and I personally would not prefer lots of coding and developing work involved.
So I wonder if there are any other positions or career directions I can think of besides doing quant. Right now I am thinking of S&T, or the asset management firms... Please give me some advice on that, much appreciated!!

Thank y’all so much for sharing your valuable insights on this!

 

[SD_]

You can look at model validation, it involves a lot of math most of the time and ML for credit risk models, etc. But definitely not coding heavy unless you are incharge of developing rather than validating.

Plus I’ve seen some math guys (PhD)in Synthetic products department at GS, who hire people with coding skills for their team just for the implementation. So it’s not like all strats are quants. Maybe connect with the alumni of your FinMath program who are working in in Banks to understand about the less coding more math roles.

Does your FinMath program not cover programming in C++ and python btw?

 

[yunze_huang]

Maybe you won’t like being a quant developer who builds large scale systems and needs to write a lot of production quality code, but you shouldn’t feel it challenging to do some analytics in python/R if you successfully complete your FinMath program. One of my friend also doesn’t like too much coding so moved on from quant analytics to an investment analyst role at a hedge fund, which requires more fundamental/ product knowledge but less programming

 

[hbbbca]

You can look at model validation, it involves a lot of math most of the time and ML for credit risk models, etc. But definitely not coding heavy unless you are incharge of developing rather than validating.

Plus I’ve seen some math guys (PhD)in Synthetic products department at GS, who hire people with coding skills for their team just for the implementation. So it’s not like all strats are quants. Maybe connect with the alumni of your FinMath program who are working in in Banks to understand about the less coding more math roles.

Does your FinMath program not cover programming in C++ and python btw?

Hi, thank you so much for your reply!
Yes, my program will cover programming in C++ and Python. I am not quite worried about handling these technical coding skills, but I just feel like it's not sth I want to do persistently for my future career tho. Following up with the role you mentioned, what's the major responsibility and work for the synthetic products team at these investment bankings?

Thanks!

 

[hbbbca]

Maybe you won’t like being a quant developer who builds large scale systems and needs to write a lot of production quality code, but you shouldn’t feel it challenging to do some analytics in python/R if you successfully complete your FinMath program. One of my friend also doesn’t like too much coding so moved on from quant analytics to an investment analyst role at a hedge fund, which requires more fundamental/ product knowledge but less programming

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
yes, I think I wouldn't worry too much about doing analytics work in python or R after the program. And I am also thinking about roles such as investment analyst, and portfolio management analyst at some asset management firms. Would you mind sharing a bit of the work your friend is currently doing, like is it related to fundamental research and analysis, or structuring the financial products?

Thanks!

 

[yunze_huang]

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
yes, I think I wouldn't worry too much about doing analytics work in python or R after the program. And I am also thinking about roles such as investment analyst, and portfolio management analyst at some asset management firms. Would you mind sharing a bit of the work your friend is currently doing, like is it related to fundamental research and analysis, or structuring the financial products?

Thanks!

She works on structured credit such as ABS, MBS, CLO and helps the investment manager construct portfolios, connecting with sell side and their research, doing data analysis using excel and some scripting.