Age mid-to-late 30s too late to start career in financial engineering?

[lhermida]

Hi everyone,

Sorry if this is maybe a stupid question, I know in a perfect world one can start a new career at any age but I would really like to query everyone in the forum what they experience in practice in their careers and companies and to receive candid responses. Is it not so uncommon to start a Masters in Computational Finance/Financial Engineering in your mid-to-late 30s?

I am 35 years old with a BEng in Chemical Engineering from a good school and have been working in academia and industry for over 10 years doing research/analysis/software development in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology. There are many parallels to computational finance/financial engineering, I use many of the same tools and approaches, e.g. statistics, linear models, genetic programming, stochastic methods, etc., requiring high-level competencies in programming and software development, C, C++, Perl, Python, R, MATLAB, etc. to analyze/acquire knowledge from large datasets of multivariate data. I have always been extremely interested in financial engineering and would like to make a career change by applying to a Masters program. Would I be too old and at a distinct disadvantage to start such a career in the industry after finishing?

thank you,
Leandro

 

[roni]

I figured this thread may help you:
When is it too late to start a quant career?

 

[lhermida]

Thanks Roni, I reposted in that thread as that is where is should be

 

[Avinash_K]

The link does not work anymore.. Can anyone please help

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The link does not work anymore.. Can anyone please help

I fixed the link. FYI, you can search by the title of that topic and it will show up.

 

[Avinash_K]

Thanks Andy for a quick help.