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Ask HN: How does one get into contracting for financial institutes?

4 points by gringofyx ↗ HN
I've been trying to get into some contract developer roles for financial institutes in London. I must've applied to about 10 different roles and haven't heard anything back. My CV/Resume is one of an experienced developer (12yrs) but just don't have any/much finance experience.

Yes - I've considered the possibility that I'm shit (I'm fairly certain I'm not). But other than that how does one get into contracting for financial institutes?

12 comments

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cjbenedikt
what exactly would you like to do? work as a freelance developer? what languages do you code in?
anothermouse
Experience of finance is required, or you had better be cheap. Experience of a product or a platform is better, but you can't understand those with out the financial knowledge . They will teach you both if you go permanent.

Typically, you need a specific skill, and they hire for that. The more exotic the better. Java? no. C++ on unix? more so. Front Arena or Murex? Easy.

Back office jobs most likely won't give you the financial market/product exposure, but closer you get to front office the less coding happens (and you won't get close without experience.)

My "in" to the industry was having perl as well as their other requirements, which made me unique amongst the other applicants (perm role). I gradually transitioned to being a c++ guy as that paid more and I was optimizing for cash.

How to get there from where you are? We'd need to know "where you are". as cjbenedikt says, what do you do, know etc?

gringofyx
My experience is quite varied but I'd say mainly anything MS stack oriented, with some Java and C++. I've also got quite a lot.of web and mobile, which I appreciate isn't 100% applicable to the financial sector.

Perhaps more relevant is my hobbyist experience building poker bots, so I know about some complex Maths, AI and game theory but I don't have a degree so I know that a potential employer may not appreciate my skill set in those areas.

I would be willing to go cheap for maybe a year until I've got a better history in the financial sector. How cheap is cheap?

cjbenedikt
where are you based?
gringofyx
London
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gringofyx
But I could work from anywhere Uk or Europe based
cjbenedikt
how can I get in touch - London is pretty good - am temporarily based in Frankfurt
gringofyx
Sure thing mate, my email address is mc underscore gringo at hotmail dot com
zpk
Financial industry as a whole is under a lot of stress right now. The jobs opps out there are shrinking...Banks talk about going lean, AKA layoffs. If you can't get into an investment bank, go for a tertiary opportunity. Try retail or some insurance company for a year or two.

You need Java or C++. Web/SOA/ and for some reason they all want multithreading experience, even though 80% of the work is server side. Familiarize yourself with the Java Concurrency package.

gringofyx
Web & SOA are a given, design patterns and high performance concurrency are all a given and there's strong signs of that all over my CV. Also, I've worked at Insurance companies before, I thought all of that might be enough to get my foot in the door.