The fintech industry is booming and if you are looking for a challenging and rewarding career in technology, working in fintech may be the right choice for you. Fintech firms are continuously searching for data engineers and software engineers to help them craft and put together pioneering financial products and services.
In this blog post, we will provide you with a better understanding of what fintech is, what it can offer to data and software engineers, and our own thoughts from first-hand experience in this area.
What is Fintech?
To begin with, what is fintech?
In a nutshell, it’s any technology that is utilized to facilitate the automation of financial services. This comprises everything from banking apps, private market networks, asset management platforms, crypto-currency, robot advisors, and AI-powered chatbots. Fintech is also used as a general term to describe a variety of financial companies that use digital technologies, data analytics, AI, and ML, including banking, payment systems, insurance, investment, and more.
Fintech started to gain traction in the early 2000s, with the launch of companies like PayPal, Envestnet, and SoFi. Since then, the fintech industry has grown tremendously, with startups and innovative products emerging everywhere.
Top 6 reasons to join FinTech
There are definitely a lot of reasons why you should join the Fintech industry and why it can lead to an extremely rewarding career.
To gain further insight, we discussed the topic with some of our most senior members from the software engineering, data engineering, and data science teams. Below you can find the top reasons why working in the Fintech industry is worth considering.
1. It’s a fast-paced industry driven by experimentation and innovation
In fintech, you’ll need to generate reliable, and scalable solutions in the fastest way possible: that is the only way to keep up with a market that is constantly evolving. This means that every contributor has to follow an agile and responsive approach, to face new challenges arising from the need for new solutions, regulation updates, or even financial changes worldwide.
Fintech companies and their products have to keep scaling up, make new integrations, and enhance relations between them. Projects rarely start with a solid plan, because they evolve over time. Furthermore, developments depend on the regulatory and market dynamics impacting the financial world.
Therefore, the process is very focused on the solution to be provided to the stakeholders.
On the other hand, the execution depends on which technologies can achieve the objective faster. You will need to change your mindset by experimenting fast, failing fast, and coming up with new ideas to keep up with the client and industry requirements.
2. Data is at the center of everything
Working in fintech can be a unique opportunity when you favor involvement with data because there aren’t many industries where your daily work is focused on high precision and quality.
In the B2B fintech sector, you work with more than just large volumes of superficial information. In fintech, every row of data is critical, because there are millions behind those figures, and quality is a top necessity in the way you handle the numbers.
Working with meticulous attention to detail on each batch of data can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. It offers an incredible chance for skill improvements for individuals in data engineering, data science, machine learning, and even artificial intelligence. By leveraging this powerful combination of skills and technologies, professionals can unlock new opportunities and create remarkable results.
3. Unparalleled Career and Growth Opportunities
Fintech has a lot to offer to many skilled professionals in terms of learning but also applying their knowledge, in several departments. There are various roles available in fintech, in different stages of product development, providing opportunities in departments such as:
- Software & App development
- Data Engineering
- Data Science & Analysis
- DevOps & MLOps
- Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
- Risk, Compliance, and Governance
- UI/UX Design
- Cybersecurity
- Project Management
All these roles engage in creating, maintaining, and improving the peak performance of one or more products, especially when working with product-led organizations. These organizations typically have in-house teams that cover a range of roles, offering a rare chance to collaborate with a diverse group of experts and make an impact. It’s a great yet rare opportunity to work for a company that gathers this many roles under one umbrella.
You also need to consider that most fintech companies are continuously scaling up and needing more employees to support their growth. Working for any of these growing companies means stability and room to follow a good career plan for yourself.
The Global Fintech Market is valued at $112.5 Billion in the year 2021 and projections say it will reach a value of $332.5 Billion by the year 2028. Here at Cardo AI, we have definitively mirrored this growth considering we have nearly tripled our size in 15 months, and have now more than 130 people on the team.
4. Working in fintech means facing complex problems and solutions
From an engineering perspective, fintech can seem similar to other domains where you get to work with different tech stacks, practices, tools, etc. What makes fintech different from other industries, is the complexity of the processes. Your work will require a longer analysis time than normal, given the impact a single mistake might have on the users. You need to take into consideration every case possible.
Financial technology involves a considerable amount of rules and regulations to abide by while working with a substantial quantity of sensitive numbers and formulas. The work you develop holds a big responsibility not only in writing quality code but also producing bulletproof solutions.
This brings us to another important reason to join the fintech industry:
5. Access to the most innovative and advanced tech stack
Most fintech companies rely on the most advanced tech stacks to produce solid and reliable results. At Cardo AI, for example, we’re not afraid to adopt new tools and technologies if it means delivering better results and improving the performance and reliability of our systems.
As discussed in the previous paragraphs, the industry is driven by innovation, and to achieve it, you will get to do your work using the best tools and technologies.
6. Global opportunities
Fintech products have little to no limitations to reaching the international market. This means that the majority of fintech organizations aim to scale globally.
Therefore, you will be working not only to provide a tech solution to localized financial services but also to new geographies as the company grows. This adds a lot of technological, organizational, and operational challenges on your shoulders during your daily work.
On top of that, you will get to collaborate with some of the top experts in both financial services and technology, learn from them, and make your work experience more complete by enhancing your career-leading skills and learning new ones.
Working at CARDO AI
At Cardo AI we believe that technology can empower businesses to grow faster and drive positive change in the financial markets. Every day, our team builds models and solutions that tackle real challenges of the private debt space, making a difference in the market and empowering our clients to make better investment decisions.
As a fintech, Cardo AI embodies all the characteristics described above, and offers talents from all around the world the chance to drive their own career growth. We don’t believe in strict career planning or top-down management, and we allow our talents to take their lead in their professional and personal development, providing everything they need to succeed.
The conclusion: you need to join FinTech
The emphasis on innovation makes working in fintech one of the most exciting career choices you can make.
No matter your background or skill set there is a good chance you will find the right fit inside the fintech world. If you’re looking for an exciting new challenge, consider making a move into this booming industry.
Ready to unleash your talent and jump on a new adventure by working in fintech? Check our talent page for our open job opportunities, or keep an eye out for new updates on LinkedIn.
