Most jobs require an employee to have one core skill or qualification, but there is the odd role that needs a culmination of skills to be able to do on a more than competent level. One such area of industry is financial IT, where to be good at your job you would need to be very confident with both numerical and computer type skills and knowledge. A very technical mind would be required, with a degree in computer science or similar just to get started in the business.

Financial IT and digital media roles span over numerous titles and responsibilities and there so are various ways to exercise your skills through areas such as banking, financial asset management and insurance. Most financial companies who offer careers in IT will be engaged in high frequency, algorithmic, propriety and electronic trading. Such companies include HSBC, Morgan Stanley, RBC and Standard Bank.

So what jobs out there combine both IT and finance? Well there are several specialist sectors, with Quant jobs among the most analytical of them, with quantitative analysis in particular a very large area of banking technology and trading applications. A quant analyst will be an important cog in the machine, especially for the vital need for risk management, an area which has grown as the financial crisis has worsened and the weaknesses it has exposed, so it has become quite imperative to have such people in these positions. Anybody working in a quant role would need strong numerical skills, as well as a total understanding of the finance industry and the software involved to make the calculations required to arrive at the results they need to present.

Test analysts are another important element to the financial world and need to have various skills to be able to make sure that software and applications are working to their potential and so will require knowledge in functionality testing, but also educated in a mathematical or science background so they can crunch the numbers effectively whilst testing. IT skills for such a job would include strong SQL (programming language) knowledge, experience working a financial markets company (for the more senior positions) and Linux knowledge. For a better idea of these types of roles you could always look at careers in IT with Cititec.

Of course being such a versatile individual will have its benefits and the wage packages available tend to reflect that, with senior test analysts able to bring home about £45,000 on average, whilst the most experienced can earn anywhere in the region of £80,000 to six figures.

This was a sponsored guest post for TheEmployable on behalf of Cititec Contract IT Jobs.