Developer role with Java experience and no MFE possible?

[rishab dhar]

Hi,

I would like your opinion on possible path path for me to be a financial developer. As you can see below, my profile is primarily that of a Java Developer.

I am currently based in Germany. I did my Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science in India. My grades were no so great either (c.a 69%), which is First Division.

Then I moved to Germany to do my Master degree in Computer Science. My Master degree was quite rigorous (although it is supposed to be 2 years, but nobody can finish it 2 years). It involved doing a Project group for 1 year (20 hours/week). The programming language of choice was Java. I did couple of student jobs during my Masters. One at the Software Lab in the University as a Web Developer (9,5 hours/week). It was primarily a front end development job (JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, RDFXML, JSON etc). Then I did another student job as Java Developer and Tester at a company (20 hours/week). The programming language used was Java, and frameworks such as Apache CLI, Ant, JUnit, JUnitx, Mockito etc. I also wrote my Master Thesis on privacy protection of smart meters. Then I learned Backend Java frameworks such as Spring MVC, worked on Tomcat, MySQL, JSP, JSTL on my own developing a small web application.

I recently graduated with a 1,8 in my Masters (getting a 1 in Germany unlike in US is almost impossible). Right now I found myself a job as a Junior Java Developer at a company in Munich. The job profile involves using Spring, Hibernate, ZV, Hybris, etc.

Now assuming I work here for a couple of years, is it possible for me to find a position as a developer in the finance industry? Or do I need to know C++ for a developer role. I would like to either work in US or in Germany (Frankfurt). The MFE degree seems to entail a significant financial load (I wish US education system was like German education system :P). So I want to know whether I can enter finance industry without breaking my bank account.

 

[C S]

There are a lot of Java developers in finance.

 

[Keith Tan]

If you know FIX programming, you are pretty much employable

 

[yetanotherquant]

>Developer role with Java experience and no MFE possible?
Yes, but do not expect a big surplus to your salary without knowledge of Fachgebiet

 

[TraderJoe]

Even though you have a solid Bachelor and Master in Computer Science, you still need five years of industry development experience before people take you seriously as a developer. Two years would be too less experience to make a transfer.
Since your education and work experience is in Germany, it should be quite easy for you to settle down in Germany.
To come to USA you would have to join a consulting company which would sponsor your H1-B visa and send you to USA on contract. Most good companies in USA would pay your tuition to do part-time MFE if you enrolled, so it would not cost you anything.

 

[C S]

You should try to develop your Java skills toward the skillset that is favorable to the more exciting Java-related development in finance. This generally means learning to deal with high message throughput and concurrency. A related technology often used with Java apps in banking is Tibco Rendezvous. Spring is used to load/initialize the different dependencies of an application, but Tibco is then used to relay messages between different applications. Front and back office apps also communicate often using FIX-like protocols, via Tibco.

 

[mhy]

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