A quant trading career can seem like it has a narrow entry point — a clear track from day one, or no way in at all. But there’s more than one path. Erik studied physics and worked in tech operations; Andrew came from institutional finance; Oliver spent years in academic research. Here’s where they started and what the transition looked like.
Where They Started
Erik studied Science at university, majoring in Physics:
“It was a fantastic challenge, although at the time I wasn’t convinced it was the most ‘employable’ choice. Looking back, I’m genuinely surprised by how often the problems I work on now connect back to the systems we studied almost 10 years ago. After graduating, I didn’t have a single industry in mind. The period between university and full-time work felt quite uncertain, but I knew I wanted to build things, solve hard problems, and find work that had a creative element to it. My first full-time role was as an Operations Associate at Uber in New Zealand. It was a mix of business operations and experimentation, including designing incentive programs to improve key business metrics.”
Andrew always had an interest in markets – but started out in institutional finance:
“I studied Commerce and Economics as an undergraduate, completing an Honours research thesis in Finance. I had a strong interest in markets from early on. I was actively trading my own personal account from high school, so pursuing a career in the trading and investment industry always felt like a natural path. Before VivCourt I worked across several roles at institutional banks and investment management firms, which gave me broad exposure to financial markets and a strong appreciation of the wider ecosystem and the various participants that interact within it.”
Oliver studied mechatronics engineering with a space focus, then continued into a PhD in machine learning and robotics:
“I didn’t have a particularly strong vision as to what my career would look like. I mainly enjoyed the research that I was doing and the people that I was working with, so I continued down that path. Unfortunately, the realities of needing to secure funding hit at some point (around post doc), which requires less time on research and more on grant writing or teaching, neither of which I found particularly inspiring.”
The move into quant trading
Erik
“Over time I realised I was being drawn toward more technical problems. Many of the opportunities around me were naturally more management-focused, but I found myself wanting to delve deeper into modelling, data, and systems. Around the same time, crypto was starting to take off, and it felt like a space where technology, markets, and experimentation were colliding and the right environment to test myself technically.
The transition from tech/business into crypto trading was humbling. I went from polished corporate offices to scrappy, fast-moving startup environments with very little infrastructure, which meant learning quickly across almost every part of systematic trading – software development, data, research, risk, and more. But that was exactly the challenge I had been looking for. It eventually led me to quant trading at VivCourt, where I’ve now been for four and a half years. In many ways, it feels like I found the right group of people – a team that’s still pushing harder, going deeper, and genuinely enjoying the challenge of trading together.”
Andrew
“The transition into quant trading and HFT came organically from realising how much of my own trading work relied heavily on programming, and that I genuinely enjoyed that side of it more and more. I wanted to move toward a role where coding and systematic thinking were at the core rather than the periphery, which naturally led me toward quantitative and high frequency trading. To support that shift I went back to university to complete a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, which significantly expanded my programming and technical knowledge. Beyond that, a lot of what I had built up over the years translated across well, statistical and time series analysis, rigorous research practices, and a solid grounding in financial markets from my earlier career all carried over in a meaningful way.”
Oliver
“I realised I could study similarly difficult and interesting problems in quant trading without the parts of academia that I wasn’t particularly fond of (securing funding, lecturing, meticulously crafting research papers and presentations). I was able to join VivCourt as a trader, and they provided graduate courses on the specifics of trading, while the maths and coding background I built during my academic years translated well to the problems we face here.”
The conventional path into quant trading – STEM degree, internship, graduate program – is real, but it’s not the only one. With the right analytical foundations, there are many ways to build the skills that matter in trading, regardless of where you started. Learn more about trading at VivCourt here.
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