Moving From Engineering Into Finance
Moving From Engineering Into Finance
My first degree was a Bachelor of Engineering in electronics and telecommunication. My second was a Masters of Management Studies in Finance. The two can look unrelated, but the engineering years shaped how I approach finance more than I expected.
Systems thinking carries over
Electronics teaches you to see a system as parts that affect each other. A signal changes in one place and shows up somewhere else. Financial risk behaves in a similar way. An exposure in one area can surface as a problem in another, and understanding the connections matters as much as understanding each part.
The vocabulary is the hard part
The concepts in finance were not the biggest hurdle. The language was. Every field has terms that insiders use without thinking, and a newcomer has to learn them quickly to keep up in meetings. I found it helped to keep my own plain definitions of each term until it became natural.
Internships are where theory meets practice
During my masters I interned at Samarth EduFin Services and then at State Bank of India. Classroom finance is neat. Real banking involves customers, processes, regulators and legacy systems all at once. Seeing that early made the later work less of a surprise.
Do not leave the engineer behind
It is tempting to drop the technical side once you move into a business role. I think that is a mistake. Banks run on technology, and being able to talk to engineers in their own terms makes it easier to turn a business need into something that can actually be built.
Coming back to building
Joining the Curious PM cohort was a way to bring the two halves together again: the engineering instinct to build things and the finance background to judge whether they are worth building. Working with AI tools made that combination feel practical rather than theoretical.
Vinit skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Vinit Patil was part of the August 2026 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 24 other talented participants.