Quant Fin programs in other countries that are up to par with US/UK/west EU?

[JTDerp]

Hypothetical: suppose you are looking to build out a small team of 2-3 people who are well-versed in the more obscure nuances of option price & volatility modeling, probably on an 'independent contractor'/freelance basis. Paying these people is out of your pocket, so trying to find an area with a good balance of modern university programs in QF, as well as relatively-low cost of living, seems a high priority...without reducing the odds of finding legit help. Your horizons are North America, Europe or Asia - any particular city/country come to mind?



I've been wandering if central/eastern Europe is a good place to start...worked with some freelancers from there, and they are very diligent in-general, good spoken English, but naturally, online freelancers only go so far before you've got to lead intensively with subject matter that is new to them.





(mods: my apology if this is more appropriate for a different forum, please move)

[Rashomon]

Maybe look at numer.ai etc players? They have some background or at least interest, and might live somewhere cheap.



Edit: The idea of looking at a particular geography seems wrong for this, since the geographies where people know this stuff are more expensive by construction. There are probably smart people all over but you would have to search by another filter. For example there is a Jobs forum on NP. MJ has a book phorum…



If you add email to your profile, I can send specific names.

[Maggette]

I really really doubt that numer.ai players are "well-versed in the more obscure nuances of option price & volatility modeling"



I work in ML/Operations Research projects. My sample might be to small and/or biased, but I think the majority of ML competition participants aren't even that interested in phynance.





Regards

[Rashomon]

[quote]
the majority of ML competition participants aren't even that interested in phynance.
[/quote]



That sounds right.



Also I don't mean to imply that the average numer.ai participant is high quality.

[Maggette]

You might be right in a way that you could find people with the right attitude towards problem solving there

[finanzmaster]

>..."well-versed in the more obscure nuances of option price & volatility modeling"

I would start not asking how/where to find such people but rather where to find a customer, who would pay for this.

The Golden time of quants is over and the market gets dryer (both in sense of liquidity and product simplicity).



But back to your questions, well, you might find good theorists in Eastern Europe or, say, India. But a product for practitioners should be done by a team of practitioners (or at least a part of team should be practitioners). And I highly doubt that there are places in Eeastern Europe or India where one can practice " in the more obscure nuances of option price & volatility modeling".

Even in Germany they mostly want "canonical" models (most of them are already implemented in QuantLib)

[granchio]

I second finanzmaster - finding the people who knows math and coding is not too hard. finding experienced practictioners who knows the tricks and pitfalls is another matter.



of course you might not care about that - I guess it depends on what you're aims are

[katastrofa]

Everybody and their cat too want to jump on the AI bandwagon now.