early career setback advice

[quantMSCF]

Hello,

I need some career advice and possibly mentorship about my current situation.
I graduated from MSCF in 2022 and worked for ~2 years for a small prop trading firm as a QR.
My employment there terminated, and I have now found a new job as a Quant Analyst for a big bank.
Finding a new job was hard and took me a lot of time, and I have accumulated some months of unemployment gap.
During these months I realized that I probably missed some opportunities, and I did not take the most out of MSCF, and I am now trying to figure out a plan to relaunch my career.
How many months of unemployment do you think could be harmful to my future employability?
How could I reasonably justify this gap in my resume? With Non-compete/Garden-Leave? Could I somehow mitigate it by enrolling in CQF and putting it on my resume?
Another thing to mention is that I signed my new job contract 2 months ago, and I might still have to wait for another 2 months to start working because of the Visa transfer and immigration paperwork.
I am now 26, and I want to mitigate the impact of this setback on my future career.
What about starting a PhD in a couple of years, taking a part-time Master's in ML maybe, or again mitigating my unemployment gap with CQF or any other certification?
What about tweaking the dates in my resume in my favour, within acceptable limits? Maybe using the date I signed the contract, considering only the immigration paperwork is taking ~4 months.
I do not want to do anything sketchy, but I would also like to put this bad experience aside and get a fresh start.

Thanks!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Don't do anything sketchy. It never ends well.
Having a gap in your employment is fine, especially in this market.
You already get the next job lined up so no need to stress over the time it takes for the paperwork to process. You have no control over this.
During this time, maybe take some online certificate, courses that would be useful for your incoming job.
Read books, network, travel, meet family and friends. Maybe this will generate some fresh idea of what you want to do in your future.
Life is short. This is just a job.

 

[quantMSCF]

Thank you for your advice!
Do you have any thoughts about CQF, or do you recommend any other certificate in ML applications to finance?
My long-term career goal is to work in QR or portfolio management.

Thanks!

 

[joe_boy]

Thank you for your advice!
Do you have any thoughts about CQF, or do you recommend any other certificate in ML applications to finance?
My long-term career goal is to work in QR or portfolio management.

Thanks!

Why not a part-time masters in ML or Statistics? I have seen some LinkedIn profiles that have very good placements with those two degrees. I understand it may be a bit expensive but I believe it will help you far much more than a professional certification. Think I heard from Dmitry (on his YT channel) that US employers don't really care about those certifications.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

CQF is unnecessary when you already have an MFE degree. Taking some stats/ML courses to freshen your skills from time to time would be a good option.
We also have a few interviews AMA with members working in QR here. I recommend reading those threads to glance valuable bits of advice.

 

[quantMSCF]

Thank you for your help!
I am going to start my new job as a quant analyst soon.
After graduating MSCF, I worked for 2 years for a small prop trading firm doing quant research on equity options market making, and now I’ll be a senior quant analyst doing ML work on the sell side, but not on the investment side but more on risk, capital requirements and retail, but with potentially very good exposure to ML and statistics.
Do you think, being already 26, and having accumulated quite a big gap in my employment, I can still get a shot in 1 or 2 years at quant research on either buy/sell side with a focus on front office investment and trading?

Thank you!

 

[quantMSCF]

One year after update:
I have completed one year at my current quant analyst role, and I have a job offer from a hedge fund as a data scientist.
I am currently enrolled in Georgia Tech OMSCS, and I am taking my first class (I need to pass 10 classes to graduate).
I am thinking whether it makes sense to continue OMSCS, considering I already have MSCF and a data scientist job at a hedge lined up.
I would complete OMSCS in 3-4 years maybe, and it is time-consuming.
Do you think adding OMSCS to my background could make a difference, or are there more meaningful (less time-consuming) things I could do over the next 3-4 years to boost my career and hopefully pivot from data science to more quant research roles.
Thanks a lot for any advice!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Happy to hear about your 1 year update. Congrats on your progress and success.
What are the courses from the MS in CS from GaTech will help in your current and future daily job?
Will your employer reimburse your tuition? Can you handle it part-time for the next few years?
If you want to upgrade your C++ skill, maybe take the advanced C++ course from QuantNet.
If you aim for QR role in a few years, maybe a MS in Stats is a better path.

 

[quantMSCF]

Thank you for your quick answer!
I am taking Reinforcement Learning right now. Other interesting classes would be Deep Learning, Machine Learning (though I already had it during MSCF), Natural Language Processing, AI, some math and optimization classes, and other classes more on the development side (operating systems, multiprocessing and multithreading, etc.): here's the link.
The total tuition fee would be around 10k, and I would pay it out of my pocket over the next 3-4 years, which would be fine for me.
I don't know if this would be the smartest investment over the next 3-4 years. Maybe I should just focus on my work and networking, or participate in Kaggle-style competitions or independent projects.
My main goal would be QR.
Thanks!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I see. It sounds like a smart investment.
If you plan to go the QR route, I think there are lot of useful tips that you can pick up here.

Q

Thread 'I'm a buy side Quant Researcher at a top hedge fund (Jane Street/Two Sigma/AQR/etc). AMA'

5/1/25

Hi all,

In the spirit of sharing and helping prospective students (I'm a senior buy side quant researcher. AMA), it's my honor to use this platform to interact with students who might be interested in this career path.

Who Am I: I'm a quantitative researcher working in systematic trading. I develop alpha signals to forecast the future prices of various financial instruments. I first learned C++ nearly 20 years ago, so I used QuantNet to refresh my knowledge on recent language features. I do not hold an MFE degree, but I have a master's degree in statistics and a PhD in...

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[quantMSCF]

The program is very time-consuming and I’m not sure I can actually balance it with a full-time job. Working at a hedge fund will probably require more focus and investment from me than my current role.
Also, it’s a 3-4 years investment, and by then I’ll have 3-4 more years of work experience, at which point I don’t know if it will move the needle having an extra Master. I was thinking maybe I should spend this time on less time-consuming projects to add to my profile: competitions, publications, single courses or projects.
Thanks for help!