Extremely dissatisfied with early-career options, MFE reasonable?

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ackd

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I am a soon-to-be graduate in CS from a T10 US school. My current career options are embedded SWE at mid-tier money managers, not particularly high paying or prestigious. I think that my job prospects would normally be better but since the job market is absolute shit, the only good interview I got was SWE at a top 5 HFT and I got rejected. I'm extremely dissatisfied with this trajectory and am very envious of my friends in quant research. I have excellent C++ and UNIX programming skills, but haven't really opened a math textbook since I got one question on the Putnam sophomore year and my schoolwork has been 100% EECS focused with little to no machine learning or stats. I have some background in traditional finance because I interviewed for a lot of IB positions before deciding that it "wasn't real work", and I know the basics of stuff like CAPM and equity valuation pretty well because I did that in high school and early college.

I'm not a genius and don't think I can ever pass the brainteasers at somewhere like JS. I got a 1560 SAT and have a 3.6 college GPA.

Does it make sense for someone like me to pursue a MFE with the hope of obtaining a quant research role? My main reservation is the money. I don't think that there's really a way for me to avoid paying near full price, and my family is not wealthy.

Also, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, idrk this site well.
 
you have a good background for quant dev, I suggest you look into that.
 
weab said:
you have a good background for quant dev, I suggest you look into that.
Click to expand...

Thank you ... I know some quant devs and they seem to like it, and it actually sounds similar to what I have done for work and currently do for side projects. My main concern is that I don't want to get sequestered into back-office work (which is exactly what I've done up until this point) and limit my salary potential. Is that a risk with a quant dev role?
 
ackd said:
Thank you ... I know some quant devs and they seem to like it, and it actually sounds similar to what I have done for work and currently do for side projects. My main concern is that I don't want to get sequestered into back-office work (which is exactly what I've done up until this point) and limit my salary potential. Is that a risk with a quant dev role?
Click to expand...
My understanding is that the quant dev responsibilities can vary by firm. You can look at the responsibilities on job posts to better understand if it is a front-office position. If you join as a quant dev at a firm where you are working closely with researchers, it is possible to eventually transition into a research role. Also the pay really isn't that different in this type of role.
 
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