Need Help! Optiver Execution Research Role (Quant) vs FAANG
Hi all,
I'm a final year CSE integrated Bachelors + Masters from one of the premier engineering institutes in India. I currently have a Quant Researcher offer for the Execution Research team in Optiver Amsterdam. I also have an SWE offer from a FAANG in India. While the Optiver role is significantly higher paying at the moment, I have no idea about future prospects, and so need help deciding between the two.
For some background about myself, I've done internships in SWE and Deep Learning research. Have no finance experience. Very little data science work (was more into competitive programming). Stats/math background limited to basic engineering courses. Have done some ML
Pointers along any of these lines would be helpful.
1) What kind of skills and experience can I expect to learn from the execution research role? Given that it seems to be a specific domain even within trading, will these skills be transferable if and when I move to other firms? Might this role possibly be a dead end?
2) What kind of different career paths could both of these roles take me through? - responsibilities, compensation, maybe higher education (maybe an MBA), location (assuming I want to return back to India)
3) For a person from a primarily CS background, is it a good idea to get into a quant role straight from uni? Does it restrict my options compared to a SWE role? Can I go back to a SWE role (or tech in general) after a quant role?
Thank you
Do optiver. The pay will be way more than india faang.
I'm also trying to look at longer term opportunities, and about coming back to India. I find only a few trading firms here, and I'm not sure which ones would fit well with the execution research role that seems very specific
Most of the time, it will be harder to go from SWE to quant research than the other way around. This is because there are already so many SWEs trying to switch into quant research for the higher pay potential, but the number of quant research positions is very limited.
If you want to transition to SWE/tech, they won't really care what type of quant you are, as long as you used relevant programming skills. You can easily transition to a SWE role in the future if you want. Of course, if your end goal is to become a SWE in a FAANG/tech company, then it makes more sense to just choose that path initially.
I think if you are considering going back to India, this should be your plan:
jesus if someone like you had grown up middle-class in the states you could be making $300k post-grad and graduated from HYPSM. You will go far either way.
Exceptio is if your parents in India were super rich and they helped enable you to do all these things
Agreed, "deep learning research" and experience in ML is probably the #1 skillset everyone wants right now. You do not need to learn "transferrable skills" you have the skill. Take Optiver if you enjoy the challenge and finance somewhat.
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