Looking to get into Financial Engineering

[SamQuant]

A bit about my background:

• I graduated from DePaul University with a 3.98 / 4.00 GPA in Computer Science.
• I've been employed at a FinTech for about 4 years now.
• Haven't had much of a math background besides courses relevant to CS.
• My prospects are for the time-being limited to Canadian Universities or Universities within Illinois.

I was wondering what my path would be to land admission into Waterloo's MQF or University of Toronto's MMF program. Would you suggest any other school like HEC Montreal's Financial Engineering course? My initial idea was to utilize the C++ Financial Engineering course offered here at QuantNet to then be able to successfully prepare myself for Waterloo's entrance exam or UofT's MMF program. Would that be a viable strategy?

Eventually, I want to be able to continue my current job but in a different sector more related to finance rather than handling back-end tasks. Also, in the future I want to pursue a Quant Dev role at a much larger institution (currently I'm working at a start-up).

 

[MikeLawrence]

The programs you have mentioned aren't discussed much on this site, I don't know hardly anything about them.
Your GPA is great, and Comp.Sci. is relevant and helpful, but it is unclear what you are wanting to do.

When you say you want to handle less back-end tasks, and more finance related tasks, that undercuts your desire for a Quant Dev role. Unless you mean that you just want to work on more finance related coding problems. I'm not entirely sure what that looks like though.

If you just want a Quant Dev job, it is my understanding that all you need is comp.sci requirements, and I'm not sure a Fin. Eng. masters is in your best interests.
If you want to transition to middle or front office, getting into a F.Eng. program will require refreshing your math skills (linear algebra, multi variate calculus, calculus based statistics/probability theory) and your options + general finance knowledge.