Traditionally, individuals with graduate degrees in Financial Engineering have worked in roles in the financial industry including:

• Portfolio Manager: These individuals help companies and traders optimally allocate capital among different investment strategies developed by investment managers.
• Trading Strategist: In this role, individuals create the models, software and strategies that drive trading at their organization.
• Risk Manager: Risk managers review strategies created by the trading strategist and develop risk management policies to comply with regulation.

With more and more businesses becoming increasingly data-driven, greater opportunities exist outside of traditional finance that lend themselves to the skills financial engineers have. Some of these fields include:

• Research: Whether through an academic institution or a technology company, more data in the world means we need more tools and products to make sense of it.
• Supply Chain: Assembly lines, and the supply chains that they connect to, create a wealth of data that needs to be modeled to keep distribution running smoothly.
• Healthcare: From genomics to drug discovery, healthcare is increasingly requiring individuals with machine learning experience to improve diagnosis and expedite discoveries.
• Agriculture: Feeding the growing population of the world will require data-driven financial planning, and the development of industry-specific financial products like crop insurance, and other risk management tools.

For more information, check out the full Guide to Financial Engineering on the WQU blog.