Get the skills you need for a career in finance technology with the FinTech Bootcamp. Learn Python programming, data science, financial analysis, data visualization, and machine learning to become a Financial Analyst, Data Scientist, or Data Analyst.
Master Excel, review corporate finance, and build a valuation model on a public company. Gain basic and intermediate Excel skills and learn how to read financial statements, build valuations, and predict market trends.
Join our financial modeling class to learn essential finance and accounting concepts, build a discounted cash flow (DCF) model in Excel, acquire advanced Excel skills, explore corporate finance and valuation, and create a financial model on a real company. This hands-on course will teach you practical financial skills.
Unlock the power of Python for data-driven decision-making as you master Python programming fundamentals and dive into data analysis. Acquire essential skills to clean and manipulate data, create insightful visualizations, and perform statistical analysis, all through hands-on projects with real-world datasets.
Learn the essential skills needed to become a Data Analyst or Business Analyst, including data analysis, data visualization, and statistical analysis. Gain practical experience through real-world projects and prepare for a successful career in the field of data analytics.
Learn Python, SQL, automation, and machine learning to become a Data Scientist. Gain Python programming, data analysis, SQL querying, and predictive modeling skills. Perfect for beginners, this program prepares you for entry-level data science and Python engineering roles. Unlock high-paying job opportunities in the field of data science.
FinTech is at the crossroads of finance and technology. It’s where the traditional financial world not only automates itself but develops in new and unheard-of directions that sometimes can be baffling to the layman. An example of how FinTech has completely altered the way in which the world of finance operates is the automated trading of stocks. Whereas, once upon a time, brokers had to watch the ticker tape to determine activity on the market and then decide what trades to make, and whereas computers eventually replaced the ticker, today’s computers are supplanting brokers as algorithms make trading decisions in fractions of a second. Of course, someone has to come up with the algorithms that do the trading—the human part of the FinTech edifice—but today’s stock market would be indecipherable to a broker of yore.
Another example of FinTech is the emergence of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was originally conceived as an electronic cash system—a means of paying for things electronically that would be as untraceable as paying someone with actual cash—but has since developed into a store of value and something traded like other commodities such as precious metals, and with even more volatility than gold. (There are other cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin; you may have heard of, for example, Etherium, which brought its own automated developments to the field.) Whether cryptocurrency will eventually supplant “fiat” currencies issued by national banks is a question only the future can answer. But the fact that a whole new class of money has emerged in the past few years illustrates perfectly the ways in which FinTech is changing the world.
FinTech is thus a complex field, but it is also one that is growing and that offers considerable job potential. One of the best ways to learn about its mysteries is by attending a bootcamp. As opposed to regular classes in the subject, a bootcamp is more intensive and more concentrated on transferable skills. Your instructor isn’t going to have you up at five in the morning doing calisthenics in the snow, but a FinTech bootcamp is going to have you working and working hard for the course’s duration. You’ll come out of it with some serious skills, however, and be ready to assume a job in a highly dynamic field.
Although Jacksonville isn’t a major financial hub (at least as yet), FinTech is prevalent even in northern Florida. There are thus FinTech-related jobs in Jacksonville, which, like every major city, has its share of brokerage offices and banks. Moreover, having a FinTech bootcamp on your resume is going to look great when applying for jobs anywhere in the financial sector, as FinTech is only going to continue growing and influencing every aspect of finance.
Financial analysts (one of the most quintessential of FinTech roles) in Jacksonville make average annual salaries of nearly $65,000. Data science, which is another aspect of FinTech, provides other possible openings for bootcamp graduates: data analysts make close to $70,000 per annum and data engineers make closer to $100,000. Note that these numbers are lower than the national averages; if you decide to leave Jacksonville, you stand to make even more.
While attending a local in-person bootcamp might seem a highly practical way of learning about FinTech, the inconvenient reality is that there are no schools in the Jacksonville area that offer intensive courses in the subject. That by no means you won’t be able to study the field; it just means that you’re going to have to turn to an online school to do so. Learning online has considerable advantages; odds are you won’t miss attending a brick-and-mortar school in the slightest once you adjust to the new learning modality.
Online education is a fairly new innovation, being one of the applications of the internet that emerged as the world began to shift many real-world activities online. Although it didn’t always get the respect it deserved in its early years, educators, students (and, yes, job recruiters) have since come to realize its many advantages. You don’t have to drag yourself any further than the living room to attend class, you can work free of distractions, and yet, you’re working with a teacher who is with you in real-time. You can go ahead and ask questions to your heart’s content and interact with the instructors just as though you were in the same room as them.
Noble Desktop, the creator of this tool, offers students several FinTech bootcamps, including their FinTech Bootcamp course. The class covers many aspects of FinTech and the financial aspects of the related field of data science. Noble also has a pair of bootcamps that focus on applications of the computer language Python (although it has become a language of a thousand uses, it was originally created by data scientists for data science). Thus Noble’s Python for Finance Bootcamp and the Python for Data Science Bootcamp. Both of these courses, briefer in duration than the FinTech Bootcamp, make excellent introductions to the data science aspects of the many-faceted world of FinTech.
Further aspects of FinTech are covered by bootcamps offered by other online schools as well. Machine learning plays a crucial role in FinTech (algorithmic trading is a form of machine learning), and machine learning bootcamps are available from the Holberton School and Practical Programming. The latter school also has a Python for Finance Bootcamp, while a more complete survey of Python’s applications for data science can be found at Coding Temple.
A bootcamp isn’t right—or even necessary—for every student. There are those who require only a smaller amount of specialized knowledge about a field to further their careers, and there are those who only want to get their feet wet before committing to a bootcamp. This is where briefer FinTech classes enter the picture such as Noble Desktop’s Algorithmic Trading with Python class, intended for financial professionals who want to learn about this growth area of their chosen field. There is no shortage of brief courses going into various aspects of Python and data science, offered online by NYC Data Science Academy and several other schools, or in Jacksonville at Certstaffix Training (virtual instructors; local computer labs) or New Horizons (fully in-person classes.) Finally, for something completely different, you may wish to consider Sabio’s online Blockchain Development class, which teaches the essentials of a technology that originated with cryptocurrency and which has been adopted by many companies, financial and otherwise.
Having decided that a FinTech bootcamp is right for you, you have to determine which one is right for you. For starters, you’ll have to decide between online and in-person classes (although, in Jacksonville, with its absence of in-person FinTech bootcamps, that choice has been made for you already.) Following that, you’ll need to determine which aspect(s) of FinTech you want to study, and then assure yourself that the bootcamp you’re considering covers it in its syllabus. Next question: how much time and money can you commit? Does the school you’re considering offer payment plans to help defer the cost of tuition? And do you want to have features like one-to-one mentoring, retake options, and job guidance included in your bootcamp? Yes, it’s a lot of questions to ask, and some homework is going to be involved, but you’re making an important decision. It behooves you to make it carefully.