HACKER Q&A
📣 alphagrep12345

Quant researcher vs. ML Engineer


I’m currently a Masters student in CS. I have summer internship offers from a top hedge fund for a quant researcher position and an ML engineer internship for a voice assistant team at FAANG.

I’m kind of interested in both and not sure which one to pick. The thing I’m mostly worried about is transferability from one industry to another, and prospects 5-10 years down the lane.

What factors do I need to consider while picking one over the other? (Apart from compensation)

  👤 sjtindell Accepted Answer ✓
Relax and pick the one that is the most interesting. With your background, the signal these offers sends, and the high demand for ML workers, you’ll be in a good place either way. It may matter what you want to do long term, they’re different tracks. To me one of these is more unique with a much higher compensation ceiling but only directly “transfers” to other financial firms, whereas the other is more generic and so transfers very well. Every FAANG has one or a few groups like that.
👤 Hydraulix989
It's much easier to go from FAANG to financial firms than the other way around.