Pg Diploma in
Digital
Finance

Career

According to The Economic Times, careers associated with the fintech sector are in great demand and demand often exceeds the current, available qualified applicants.19

Here are some of the exciting careers that are available in this sector:

1. Blockchain developer

Demand for blockchain talent is soaring, with salaries to back it. According to TechCrunch, the ratio of demand for job openings is 10:1, with 10 representing the positions that need to be filled and one representing the blockchain developer that is applying for the position. Nick Szabo, the developer who coined “smart contracts’, notes that there is a very high “dollar-to-knowledge’ ratio in the blockchain space, where capital greatly exceeds talent.20

Upwork, the freelance talent marketplace, saw the demand for blockchain experts climb to the fastest-growing skill out of more than 5,000 skills in terms of freelancer billings — a year-over-year increase of more than 35,000%.21

These particular skills are in demand:

Hyperledger Fabric: This enterprise blockchain framework uses modularity and scalability to support changing business rules.22

Ripple: This payment protocol is used for distributed payments, exchanges and remittances.23
Solidity: This blockchain platform allows smart contract development on the Ethereum network.24

2. App developers

Mobile application developers continue to be in strong demand. App developers who are fluent in more than one programming language, such as Java, HTML5, Objective-C, C++, C#, Python and Swift, along with UX and UI design skills, enjoy great success in financial sectors.25

3. Financial or business analysts

Financial analysts study financial data to spot trends and make forecasts in order to assist with investment decisions. Similarly, business analysts study business strategy, models, processes and workflows, and IT systems to identify inefficiencies and unearth areas that can be improved ina company’s operations.26

4. Product manager

In the same way that fintech is synonymous with innovation, product managers also need to develop products by combining out-of-the-box thinking with customer empathy and unconventional techniques in order to drive business growth. Innovative growth should also be accessed through product development launches that other firms have adopted, integrating new technology with best practice in fintech products.27

5. Compliance expert

US regulators are focusing more on compliance for technology startups , which is compelling fintech businesses to prioritise this. David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business says, “Fintech companies tend to chase product growth above all else, as is common with many venture-backed businesses. But finance is one of the most heavily regulated parts of the economy, which leaves less room for creative interpretations of the rules — and a career
opportunity for legal and compliance experts.’28

6. Cybersecurity analyst

Cybercrime costs financial service organisations an average of $17 million per year,29 including the cost of prevention, which makes the appearance of cybersecurity analysts near the top of the high-demand list understandable. As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, so too the detection, prevention, and elimination of these through effective cybersecurity will become invaluable.30

7. Data scientist

Data science is a multidisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge from data in order to make better decisions. Data scientists working in fintech need to be able to identify patterns and trends in data sets – often very large ones – in order to solve business problems.

Ultimately, data scientists take raw data, clean it, and then analyze it to harvest useful information from it for financial service firms to predict an outcome. Data scientists often come with a talent mix of computer science, math, and statistics skills. Other science qualifications may also enter the field, particularly those with PhDs.31

8. Quantitative analyst

Quantitative analysts, or ‘quants, are maths, computing and finance experts whose quantum computing skills are used to develop the algorithms needed by large investment banks and hedge funds to manage the data-driving trading technology used to trade securities and analyse risk. As big data grows, so will the demand for quantitative analysts, especially in fintech, to come up with business models that will allow trading to be a primarily automated process.32 The Wall Street
Journal recently wrote that the quants now run Wall Street, with salaries as high as $500,000 per year.33