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Transitioning from PhD to Quant Work

Danster

Danster

Joined
6/22/12
Messages
1
Points
11
Hello,

I shall be completing my PhD in the coming spring and I am thinking about quant work as a potential job opportunity come Fall 2013.

As of right now, I do not expect to be prepared for such a career. I do have a basic academic background in finance and I have a well rounded background in mathematics. However, my coding experience tends to be novice. Most of my MATLAB/C++ experience has been ad-hoc and usually the algorithms I write are brute force. At the same time I have not studied Stochastic Processes and it seems that understanding Martengale's and Levy Processes seems important to the field. By reading the interview questions forum, it appears now or days banks are expecting you to have such technical knowledge as a prerequisite.

Given all that, I realize I have some time. So my question is this: If I wanted to land a job as a quant, should I focus on being an expert programmer, should I focus on understanding the stochastics, or what convex combination of the two should I do?
 
In the upcoming 2012-2013 QuantNet International Guide to Financial Engineering Programs, we have a section where recruiters and hiring managers provide education/career advice.
Here is a snippet of the wisdom that applies to your question
Programming – if you’re not good at it – get good at it. In almost every role in quantitative finance you will be required to program. The better you are, the easier it will be for you to land a job in the field. Languages to concentrate on are: C++, Perl, Python, Java, C# /.NET, Scala, Hadoop, MatLab (not a substitute for C++!) and other functional programming languages.
Click to expand...
 
Given what you said, it might be that derivatives pricing work would be hard for you to break into (especially these days).

Maybe you can set your sights on quant developer or risk roles? Or data analytics?

Don't let me stop you if you have your heart set on working in derivatives; just a thought.
 
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