How to get a job in fintech

• Fintechs might seem to exist at the intersection of finance and technology, but they’re more like technology companies that operate in finance.
• Fintechs come in many forms; startups can be chaotic and lucrative whereas 'unicorns' with over $1 billion in funding might be more stable and bureaucratic.
• Remote options are available, but hybrid work and other employee benefits are under threat.
• Working for a fintech can be very lucrative, especially if you're given stock and are subsequently given a chance to sell it for a far higher price.

So you want a job in fintech? Perhaps you're a computer science student looking at alternative career paths, perhaps a finance student in search of something more innovative than banking. No matter who you are, there are things you need to know before you apply.

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What kinds of fintechs are there?

An understanding of the broad fintech ecosystem, and indeed what 'fintech' actually is, is essential to understanding where your employer of choice operates within it. As the name implies, fintech is a combination of finance and technology. Put simply, fintechs sell proprietary technology solutions, either to companies (B2B fintechs) or to consumers (B2C fintechs), or some combination of both. In terms of functionality, major fintechs operate in the payments space, but they might also be digital banks, and infrastructure firms for sectors like trading and crypto. Almost all fintechs these days are flogging their ‘innovative’ AI solutions… But actual innovation varies between firms.

When it comes to size, fintechs are categorized into three broad types:

• Startups: Young fintechs often working on bleeding edge technologies. These can be some of the most intense places to work in fintech, but in return offer some of the highest potential upside through equity pay. The potential risk is high too; the majority of startups don’t survive.
• Scale-ups: Fintechs which have survived a few funding rounds and generally have a headcount in the hundreds. You’re still working on exciting tech, but there’s a bit more structure (or bureaucracy, depending on your fintech). Stock pay potential is still high here.
• Unicorns: Fintechs which have achieved a valuation of $1bn or more. These are significantly more structured than start ups, but in exchange have limited growth potential for stock pay. The culture at these firms is still generally much more dynamic than ‘TradFi’ institutions like banks. 

Major financial institutions have pseudo-fintechs as they pursue a number of side projects and products with a technological edge. JPMorgan and Nomura, for example, have been working on crypto infrastructure under the respective banners of Kinexys and Laser Digital. Digibanks and payments platforms have been the main outlet, with mixed success; HSBC launched digibank Zing in 2024 as a Revolut competitor, and announced it was shutting it down just one year later.

There are also a number of older, more established firms that aren't always considered among the fintech ecosystem. They include the likes of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.

What are the biggest cities for fintech jobs and who are the big players?

The three top locations for fintech funding are New York, London and San Francisco. A report from VC firm Finch Capital said that London fintechs actually raised the most investment from 2022 to 2025, at just over €30bn ($34.6bn). San Francisco and New York brought in ~€20bn and €17.5bn respectively. The gap between those cities and other fintech hubs is enormous.

Each of the major hubs is home to a number of the most prominent fintechs operating today. London is home to Revolut. New York has Ramp and San Francisco has Chime.

Not all major fintechs are in the big hubs, though. NuBank, one of the largest digibanks, is based in Brazil. Grab is Asia's biggest fintech and is based in Singapore. Klarna comes from Sweden. 

What do fintech jobs involve?

Fintech jobs are fundamentally different to jobs in traditional finance, especially when they're in a fintech start-up.  When you work in a start-up you'll often be expected to a bit of everything. The fewer people a fintech employs, the more multitasking will be necessary.

There are broad job categories, though. Software engineers work on building and maintaining the infrastructure of the firm. Product managers (PMs) develop new features for existing products and new products to sell. Sales, marketing and partnerships people look for institutions and clients to utilize their services, help broaden consumer awareness of the fintech and, of course, bring in the money.

In the unlikely even that you found a fintech yourself, you'll obviously be in an executive role far earlier than you would in traditional finance. While the size of your team may not exceed that of one run by a banking MD (or even some VPs), your responsibilities will be much broader and could include liaising with venture capitalists, private equity firms and other possible investors in the company. 

Fintech departments also intermingle far more frequently than in banks. Engineers and product managers, for example, may work together much more often and may be structurally intertwined. Thanks to AI, some of these divisions are swallowing each other; one startup founder told us they’re only hiring software engineers and giving them control of the product division because of how easy AI makes it to prototype new features.

Hierarchies can be flat in fintech. At Revolut, for example, young employees are handed senior leadership roles and allowed to bring their ideas to fruition far quicker than would be possible elsewhere.

What is the culture like in a fintech?

Fintechs are, most often, founder driven companies. The culture at each fintech can vary wildly as they tend to be reflective of those founders.

At Revolut, for example, you tend to be left to your own devices to solve problems; founder Nik Storonsky has often waxed lyrical about how he disdains overly corporate, micromanaging leaders. Stripe insiders, meanwhile, have told us the firm has a “culture of writers” where people love to explain the work that they’re doing; they said that you’re likely to see detailed messages from the Collison Brothers within the company’s internal Slack. 

Fintech used to be a bastion for remote workers in finance as banks began pushing staff back to the office. Robinhood was one of the earliest to bring staff back, followed by the likes of Checkout.com and Starling Bank. Last year, Revolut spoke about how it doesn’t care where you do your work, but recently mandated three days in the office for its graduate hires. Some fintechs, like Coinbase, still seem to be embracing remote work.

As funding for fintechs is squeezed, they have become demanding employers. Mariano Albera, CTO of Checkout, said that “every engineer I know is working a lot more hours and a lot later” at a conference in June. Some of the quirkier benefits have also slowly eroded; payments fintech Bolt used to give staff a four day workweek but quietly scrapped the benefit in 2024, then last year it paused many of the other benefits on offer until revenues increased.

How to get a fintech job

To survive in fintech today, you’ll need to show you can do more with less. Fintech employees have frequently lamented that their firms have been making cuts, either to headcount or to their cost-base, while expecting a similar level of output. 

Open roles in fintech are also becoming scarce. Recruiters say that, when someone leaves a role, it’s easier to hand off that role to an existing employee who can use AI to plug the gaps. Fewer open roles means you’ll be competing with more prospective candidates for each position.

How do you overcome this struggle? By demonstrating a ‘fintech mindset.’ For Michael Abdul, a London-based fintech recruiter at recruitment firm Volition, this means evidence of “building viable products, prototypes and proof of concepts; you should be trying to innovate." Louisa Süsserott, head of talent advisory at VC firm Cherry Ventures, says fintech employees must be "highly adaptive" with "great communication skills" and, interestingly, should be "very happy in ambiguous environments.”

Experience in a big name company also helps, but it can be role dependent. Abdul says that “Goldman Sachs are always building innovative stuff,” but they also are plagued with legacy tech; fintechs can usually tell which side you’re working on.

Revolut's fintech employees are deemed among the best. CEO Nik Storonsky said he is looking for “self-guided” people who don’t need to be asked how they’re doing because they find fulfilment in their work. Some fintechs are a bit nicer.

For early stage fintechs, Storonsky released a hiring playbook for startups and scale-ups, which you can reverse engineer to figure out how to look more employable. For example, it says that vague and overly rehearsed answers to questions in job interviews are a red flag, whereas quantifiable outcomes and evidence of working to tight deadlines can make you more attractive.

How is AI changing jobs in fintech?

Read more: How AI is changing jobs in fintech

This depends which fintech you work for. Generally, though, you are expected to deliver more than ever before.

For engineers, the job is becoming more about curating than creating. AI tools write the majority of code at many major fintechs, and senior engineers are writing as little as 15 lines of code in some cases. One start-up founder told us that there’s no human-written lines of code at all in his contemporary fintech.

For non-technical roles, the ability to prototype tools and create your own AI solutions is increasingly important. Finance staff are expected to build financial analysis tools rather than relying on cumbersome excel workbooks. 

At early-stage fintechs, where staff perform multiple roles, AI hasn't changed much. In bigger fintechs, you’re likely to see your role converged with another if a colleague leaves.

What qualifications do you need for a job in fintech?

Read More: What qualifications and skills do you need for a career in fintech?

Fintech encompasses such a wide range of roles that your choice of course is largely dependent on the function you hope to work in. Software engineers should probably do computer science, finance staff should study finance or accounting. You get the gist.

There are many stories of people who founded fintechs after dropping out of schools, like the Collisons, who dropped out of MIT and Harvard. Dropping out of your university is not a shrewd idea, however, if you want to be a fintech employee; recruiters say that managers can often be “old school” and that university acts as a baseline talent filter.

Some fintechs also offer student schemes, which you generally need to be a student to get into. These include Revolut’s ‘Rev-Celerator’ internships and the Supernova program from OKX in Hong Kong and Singapore. These aren’t easy to get; Revolut has a lower acceptance rate than Goldman Sachs.

Fintechs with campus recruitment teams and/or graduate schemes include:

• Revolut (Europe)

• Wise (Europe)

• Starling Bank (Europe)

• Checkout.com (Europe)

• Stripe (Global/US)

• PayPal (Global/US)

• Coinbase (US)

• Robinhood (US)

• Grab (Asia)

• OKX (Asia)

Established financial services firms that don't fit the archetype of fast growing fintechs, but which do combine finance and technology are most likely to offer graduate programs. Visa, Mastercard and Fiserv all offer them.

Beyond standard education, there are a variety of fintech-specific certificates, and even fintech masters courses but these have their own limitations; the former is aimed more at career transitioners while the latter has more of a broad focus on finance jobs than just fintech startups. It might be wiser to obtain qualifications and training in AI tools to stand out instead.

How much do fintech jobs pay? 

Read more: How much do fintech startup jobs really pay?

Depending on where you work, fintechs can be a gold mine. Salaries can be decent, but it’s the stock pay where the real money is made. It can also be worth nothing if you work for a fintech that goes bust.

On average, fintechs in London pay around $110k in salary, while New York and San Francisco pay above $150k. In each city, fintech staff earn more than employees in the average tech startup. Fintech staff working remotely earn closer to $92k.

Many fintech staff receive stock pay, but the amount usually depends on seniority. For junior engineers, stock pay tends to make up ~20% of total compensation whereas stock makes up more than 50% of pay for many senior engineers.

The real challenge with this stock pay is finding an opportunity to cash out. IPOs, in which fintechs become publicly tradable on the stock market, are out of fashion in fintech, with major players like Stripe and Revolut instead relying on secondary share sales to give staff some liquidity (turn their stock into cash). If your fintech isn’t successful enough to have one of those, you might need to hope for it to get acquired to break the golden handcuffs.

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