Today, Paul Bilokon (QDC Faculty) interviewed Al Thompson, Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Cruise, San Francisco.

Al is a recent alumnus of the Quantitative Developer Certificate (QDC), a global certification programme run by World Business Strategies, Thalesians Ltd, and Thalesians Marine Ltd.

Banks, hedge funds, and financial technology companies employ thousands of quantitative software development experts with salaries averaging $124,762 per year (as reported by Glassdoor), with salaries for senior practitioners and managers extending into seven and eight figures. Not only are these jobs financially lucrative, they are intellectually challenging and stimulating, and highly regarded socially. Employers include all the major bulge bracket investment banks and hedge funds, as well as leading technology companies.

QDC includes lectures on Python, C++, kdb+/q (a leading time series database developed by KX and FD Technologies), algorithms and data structures, and electronic trading (including high-frequency trading, HFT).

Paul asked Al what he liked about this course. He told me that the course is intellectually stimulating and challenging: “The course is a whirlwind tour of systems development for quantitative finance. It is an excellent primer for further studies in algorithmic trading and machine learning (ML) for finance, and fine preparation for those seeking careers as quantitative developers.”

Paul asked him what in particular made this course so useful. Al mentioned “excellent lecture materials, extensive reading lists, and insights from lecturers with deep experience as practitioners and developers in the finance domain. The course lectures and assignments provide an excellent resource and reference for data visualization, time series processing and forecasting, database development, high performance computing (HPC), and modern systems architecture.”

This is extremely encouraging feedback for the entire QDC faculty, including Saeed Amen (who teaches Python) and Ivan Zhdankin (who teaches C++). The programme is managed by seasoned industry leaders: Neil Clive Fowler (the founder of World Business Strategies), Chris Uduezue, Geoffrey Brown, Edward Denison, Alex Bilokon and the respective teams at World Business Strategies, Thalesians Ltd, and Thalesians Marine Ltd.

Thank you Al for attending this course, congratulations on striving for technical excellence, and best wishes to you in your present and future career.