What qualifications and skills do you need for a career in fintech?
Fintechs are much flatter organizations than banks and other traditional finance institutions. Graduate schemes do exist, but the overall pipeline of young talent into fintech is often more idiosyncratic. Does that mean you can get a top fintech job when coming from an unconventional background?
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Michael Abdul, CEO of fintech recruitment firm Volition, told us that "most of the hiring managers are old school" and look for a degree as evidence of "raw smarts." It can be a good way to filter out a lot of unqualified candidates, but means that many high-potential candidates are lost as collateral.
Doing a degree also gives you access to the various internship and graduate schemes on offer at top fintechs. Revolut accepts more than 200 students for its 'Rev-celerator' program while Stripe accepts more than 100 people for its own internships. These can be very difficult to get into; Revolut accepts less than 1% of Rev-celerator applicants.
Which course should you take for these? Among Stripe's internships (which are primarily engineering roles), computer science degrees are overwhelmingly common. Revolut's interns include more finance and economics graduates. Many from both cohorts go to top schools; Imperial College in London appears particularly popular for Revolut interns while Stripe likes to hire from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Waterloo's co-op program.
A university education alone might not be enough. Abdul said that "formal degree based education moves so slowly that [schools are] very much playing catch up with a lot of the bleeding edge AI." Attending a top school like a Russell Group in the UK or Ivy League in the US can hedge against this, as they're more focused on problem-solving frameworks than educating students on any particular technology.
What other qualifications can you obtain to stand out? Well, fintechs love AI and the major AI labs provide a wide range of free training resources for their respective tools. Anthropic provides over 20 individual courses via Skilljar, covering topics like coding and Claude Cowork. 'OpenAI Academy,' meanwhile, provides both learning modules and livestreamed events.
Taking courses on more technical topics like coding can be a boon if you work in a non-technical role. Fintechs like Ramp give their staff sizeable (sometimes unlimited) token budgets and have heaped praise on employees in divisions like finance and sales who have vibe coded tools to automate their most aggravating workflows.
There are also plenty of fintech-specific courses you can take. Harvard's fintech certificate costs a few thousand dollars while MIT Open Learning provides a free, albeit dated course which first released in 2020. These can be great for teaching you the nuances of the broader fintech ecosystem, and about the underlying technologies these firms are built on like blockchain, but they're generally geared towards more senior career transitioners seeking management roles.
If you're really committed, you can even take a fintech masters course. Universities like Imperial and Warwick in the UK, and NYU Stern in the US offer these. They don't seem to be specific to fintech startups though; Imperial's core modules include accounting, corporate finance and portfolio management. Naturally, then, graduates of these courses often get jobs in banks. Imperial's testimonials come from current employees at JPMorgan - not Stripe or Revolut.
Return to our guide to careers in fintech.
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