Looking For A Career in Fintech? Here Are Top Skills, Job Roles in This Emerging Field

Fintech or financial services and technology, has proven to be a major game-changer in India over the past few years. It has played a vital role in facilitating the BFSI sector with a digital toolbox that is helping them thrive and serve customers better. The industry has redefined the job market by throwing up a gamut of lucrative career opportunities in various domains for freshers and experienced talents alike.

Being driven by technology this industry is an evolving one and hence is always in need of skilled talent. Key functions in Fintech are broadly classified into six major areas –

Product and technology

As per a recent study titled ‘Present Hiring Outlook in India and the Future of Work’ conducted by CareerNet, at least 69 per cent of recruiters are looking for tech-based talent. As the backbone and a key differentiator for fintech, technology is what makes it a lucrative industry. Mobile and web engineering, APIs, Backend engineering (Python, Java) data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning form the cornerstones of any fintech platform, which leads us to the key opportunities in the sector, that is, product managers, software developers, cloud engineers, data scientists, to name a few.

Marketing

The kind of roles that a fintech offers in marketing include Digital Marketing, Online Acquisition, and Digital Promotion and Engagement. A key skill common to most of the roles would be a strong understanding of online marketing and the ability to analyse significant amounts of data and trends.

Data Science

Data Science forms one of the core differentiators for any fintech company. Data Scientists would make constant use of data models to analyze past and present data and predict future trends in order to apply the learnings for credit risk scoring, fraud detection and prevention, portfolio optimization and asset management, customer retention, etc.

Operations

While for most fintechs, operations include basic functions similar to a traditional financial services provider like KYC, customer support, and customer onboarding. There are roles with more go-to-market learning, strong general management skills as well as those with a more product-oriented approach. Most of these roles demand people with good communication and operational skills like attention to detail, business-enabling capacity, liasoning with regulators, etc.

Risk, compliance, and information security

The skills required to secure a role in the fintech industry are quite similar to traditional financial organisations. Additionally, information security is by far the most crucial function in fintech, protecting the extremely sensitive information of customers. Information security professionals are in extremely high demand, as data breaches can sink a company.

Support functions

Like any organisation, fintechs too have finance, legal, HR, procurement, and internal IT as support functions. These functions are pivotal to the operating of any fintech, as they deal with enabling the company to function. The roles here would need people with strong functional know-how and a cultural affinity with fast-moving, diverse and ambitious companies.

With several homegrown as well as global fintechs opening doors to India, the industry holds opportunities for several untapped talents across the country. It won’t be wrong to say that the industry looks to generate a significant number of jobs in the coming years.

— Authored by Ravi Maithani, Head of People and Culture, Tide (IN)

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