Ever since its inception in the year 1992, this specialized stream of study of financial engineering has been encouraging a lot of students to pursue it to become an expert at derivatives pricing, execution, financial regulation, corporate finance, risk management, portfolio management, trading, and structured products.
What does a financial engineer do?
With in-depth knowledge of the domain, a financial engineer becomes a pro at using mathematical formulas, engineering, and programming methods in financial theories and also develops data supported financial models of the market trends based on analyses.
The global demand
Belonging to the category of specialized work, this stream has always found ample demand in the market. Hence, pursuing a career in financial engineering would be a great opportunity.
The responsibilities
One of the primary responsibilities of a financial engineer is to study the market moves and judge the potential of it to make strategic models for better financial allocations. Though the accuracy can never be 100% with the chances of abrupt incidences occurring at any point in time, the risk associated with the investment portfolios surely reduces with the expert interventions of the engineers of this field.
The skill requirement
The prerequisite to make an effective simulation or financial model remains to master the skills of programming. With expertise in advanced programming, an engineer can expect to make his/her predictions close to perfection.
The job prospect
With financial engineering emerging as one of the most demanded domains in the market, financial engineers are expected to be absorbed in various levels of the industries and corporate globally.
The job role
- With in-depth knowledge in computer simulation and market trend analysis, financial engineers do profitable market investment plans as financial analysts or financial risk managers.
- The financial analysts also make appropriate simulations to predict market behavior in a cohesive way.
- The government and financial institutions have also started to hire financial engineers to make the analyses more close to perfect to predict the behavior of the respective market economies.
- Option for providing consultancy also remains open for people opting for financial engineering as their specialized studies.
The qualification required
- Following is the list of courses that can get you near to the studies of financial engineering.
- A bachelor’s degree or a Master’s degree in the domain of science will gear up your chances of making a career out of this quantitative perspective of engineering known as financial engineering.
- Having a strong programming skill along with a degree in computer engineering or electrical engineering is counted as an advantage for financial engineering.
- A higher degree in mathematics along with a certification in SAS, MATLAB, RAD or S+ or any other statistical packages would be a great way to start your studies in financial engineering.
Get into an internship program
The moment you become a degree holder in the financial engineering domain, grab a position as an intern in any financial institute to ensure the hands-on experience in the field. It will also help you in understanding the minute details associated with the practical approach of the study.
Scope in India and abroad
The scope of career in financial engineering is much higher in the USA when compared to India. But, with the change in conventional perspectives towards education and its application, India is also emerging as a primary market for financial engineers.
Salary of the domain
The salary level varies with the weight of the degree earned and the years of experience in the relevant field. However, the average that you can earn being a financial engineer is never going to be less than 6 lakhs per annum which makes it one of the best-paid jobs in the market.
