Is the CQF Worth it for an ETH Zurich Engineer Transitioning to Quant Finance
[TL:DR] I’m a robotics & ML engineer from EPFL & ETH Zurich looking to transition to quantitative finance. Preferably in a hedge fund or a commodity trading company. I was wondering if the CQF would be beneficial for me to have.
Hey everyone.
I’m actively trying to switch fields and move towards quantitative finance, ideally in a hedge fund or a commodity trading house.
I’m a robotics & ML engineer by trade. I did my undergrad at EPFL (Switzerland) in Mechanical Engineering and my Master’s degree at ETH Zurich. About a year and a half ago I was approached by an energy trading firm who wanted to hire me for a quant analyst role at their gas & power desk. After a bunch of long interviews an offer was expected from them but they’ve had to cancel it due to internal reasons and unanticipated restructuring.
That « almost » opportunity was a calling for me to lock-in and make the transition into the finance industry since I saw that my profile could translate into valuable skills in that sector.
So I undertook tons of self-learning over the past year and a half. Built a bunch of public projects on my GitHub and currently developing a pretty big algo trading strategy (building the backtesting infrastructure, stress testing, OOS testing, dealing with the headache of multi-year tick data acquisition) on equity futures. I’m also currently attending a certification class to become a risk analyst for the commodities industry (I mainly did this so that I have something to add to my resume) and now I’m starting to look for work.
I applied and got accepted to join the CQF program. My thinking was that it could bridge the final gap between my technical knowledge and quant finance and be able to do it in parallel to work instead of doing another Master’s degree in financial engineering which would prevent me from doing so. I would also help to show the seriousness of my transition.
What are your takes on the CQF and my reasoning ? Would love to hear some opinions if this is the right choice for me.
I also should note that with the job market being the way it is right now, I’m networking quite a bit with quants and execs in the industry in addition to sending applications which generally don’t pan out. Not even for an interview.
Wishing you all a nice Friday !