I have recently shifted to San Jose,California and looking for career opportunities in the Bay Area (have a valid EAD). As its quite concentrated in Tech sector, I wanted to get an understanding of finance opportunities from your experiences…
I am a Chartered Accountant from India - 3 years of experience with Goldman Sachs (India) in FP&A role. I wrote the CFA Level III exams last weekend and now in search of financial analysis or equity research related job profiles…
Would appreciate any suggestions/recommendations that you’d have for me.
From my experience, finance jobs there are limited but they do exist. I would guess that you will end up in the corporate finance division of one of the many non-finance companies in the area. A role in equity research or something similar will be quite unlikely. There are some mutual fund and hedge fund type companies in the area, but they tend to hire in small numbers, and the bigger companies tend to recruit from the same, established channels.
there are crap tonnnnnn of private equity in the area. I don’t mean real estate PE firms but venture PE firms. There are quite a few hedge funds out there not to mention Google Capital which is basically working for a very large, very rich hedge fund and venture fund in one shop. Then there are corporate strategy departments (M&A teams) within tech firms such as Facebook, Cisco, Linkedin etc. in the SFO area.
Thanks all for your suggestions - I am actively seeking opportunities via LinkedIn and other job portals as of now and its not an easy piece of cake to get a finance profile here! Will consider applying on the specific companies you guys have suggested…thanks again
Yeah, I don’t think you’re getting into those VC places or Google Ventures. Miscellaneous corporate finance jobs, I imagine are doable assuming no visa constraint. It also might be worth mentioning that Bay Area culture tends to be friendly towards foreigners, since all the FOBs work in technology. Hopefully, that makes things easier…
oh OP, because the place flows with tech money and gold, there are bunch of established as well as new and growing RIA/asset managers. You could try for portfolio analyst or investment analyst roles at these asset manager/RIAs. The roles are part ops and front office.
But you could try FP&A or finance manager roles which pays you very well and is something you have been doing.
Agree - I am open for both corporate finance and research/portfolio (if I am lucky enough) roles when doing the applications… Hoping to get some interview calls and then take it up from there… Have got my EAD based on L2 visa so not worried on that as of now… Are any of you working in Bay Area and could probably help refer my resume in your company?
