How to Get Into Fintech: The Complete Career Guide

Fintech is now one of the fastest-growing sectors in the global economy, and the demand for talent has never been higher. If you have been wondering how to get into fintech — whether you are coming from traditional banking, software engineering, or an entirely unrelated field — this guide covers exactly what you need to know: the roles, the skills, the job boards, and the realistic career paths that actually work.

Why Fintech Is Worth Considering Right Now

The numbers make a compelling case. According to McKinsey, global fintech revenues are projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, growing nearly three times faster than traditional banking. CB Insights tracked over 5,000 fintech companies globally as of 2025, with deal activity rebounding strongly after the 2022–2023 correction.

Beyond market size, fintech offers a compensation premium over traditional finance that is hard to ignore. Product managers and engineers at Series B+ fintechs routinely earn 20–40% more in total comp than their counterparts at regional banks, thanks to equity upside and competitive base salaries.

The culture is also meaningfully different. Remote-first or hybrid work is the norm at most fintechs — Stripe, Plaid, and Brex all operate with distributed teams across multiple countries. For people who want to avoid a fixed-office schedule, fintech is structurally more flexible than most financial institutions.

Looking into 2026, four sub-sectors are drawing the most investment and hiring:

• Embedded finance — financial services built into non-financial apps (e.g., a retail brand offering BNPL at checkout)
• AI/ML in credit — automated underwriting, fraud scoring, and alternative credit models
• Real-time payments — FedNow adoption in the US, expansion of UPI-like infrastructure globally
• Crypto infrastructure — custody, settlement rails, and institutional digital asset services

The Major Fintech Sub-Sectors Explained

Fintech is not one industry — it is eight or nine distinct sectors that happen to share a regulatory environment. Understanding which sub-sector fits your background is the first step in building a credible job search.

Payments — The infrastructure that moves money between parties. Companies like Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, and Square build the rails, APIs, and merchant-facing tools that power online and in-person commerce. This is one of the most engineering-heavy sub-sectors.

Digital Banking / Neobanks — Consumer-facing challenger banks with no physical branches. Chime (US), Nubank (Latin America), Revolut (Europe/global), and Mercury (business accounts) have collectively captured tens of millions of customers from traditional banks. Product and growth roles are plentiful here.

Lending & Credit — Fintechs using data and algorithms to extend credit to consumers and businesses. Upstart uses AI to underwrite personal loans. LendingClub and Affirm (BNPL) have redefined consumer lending. Risk and data science talent is in high demand.

Insurtech — Technology-first insurance companies. Lemonade uses AI for claims processing; Root Insurance prices auto insurance based on driving behavior. The sector is smaller but growing, with strong demand for actuarial and data talent.

Wealthtech — Digital investing and wealth management. Betterment, Wealthfront, and Robinhood brought low-cost investing to retail customers. Newer entrants are targeting HNW clients and 401(k) plans.

RegTech / Compliance — Tools that help financial institutions comply with AML, KYC, and fraud rules. ComplyAdvantage, Alloy, and Sardine are leaders here. This sub-sector is booming because regulatory pressure is increasing globally, and compliance automation is a compelling cost-saving pitch.

Crypto & Digital Assets — Infrastructure for digital currencies and tokenized assets. Coinbase (exchange and developer tools), Fireblocks (institutional custody), and Circle (USDC stablecoin) are building the institutional layer of crypto. The sector has matured significantly since 2021 and now attracts traditional finance professionals.

Embedded Finance / Infrastructure — The "picks and shovels" layer. Plaid connects apps to bank accounts. Unit and Marqeta let companies launch banking and card products without a banking license. These B2B infrastructure companies are often the best-paying and fastest-growing employers in fintech.

Key Roles in Fintech

The roles in fintech span both finance and technology disciplines. Here is a breakdown of the most common positions, with salary benchmarks based on Glassdoor and Levels.fyi data for US-based roles (2025–2026).

Product Manager — Fintech PMs own the roadmap for financial products: payment flows, lending decisioning, wallet features, or compliance tooling. They sit between engineering, risk, and business stakeholders. The best fintech PMs combine technical fluency with regulatory awareness. Many come from consulting or banking backgrounds.

Software Engineer (Payments / Backend / Platform) — Engineers build the APIs, transaction processing systems, and data pipelines that make fintech products work. Payments engineering specifically requires understanding of card networks, webhooks, idempotency, and reconciliation. Python, Go, and Java are common stacks.

Data Scientist / ML Engineer — Fintech lives on data. Credit scoring, fraud detection, customer segmentation, and churn prediction are all ML-driven. Experience with structured financial data, regulatory constraints on models (FCRA, ECOA), and productionizing models is highly valued.

Compliance & Risk Analyst — Every fintech must comply with AML, KYC, sanctions screening, and consumer protection laws. Compliance analysts review transactions, write policies, and work with regulators. Former bank compliance staff are a natural fit.

Growth / Performance Marketer — Fintechs are aggressive about customer acquisition. Performance marketers run paid channels (Meta, Google, TikTok), optimize CAC/LTV ratios, and run lifecycle email programs. Strong analytical ability is essential.

Business Development / Partnerships — BD roles involve signing distribution partners, negotiating API integrations, and managing bank sponsor relationships. A background in sales or relationship management in financial services translates well.

Skills That Transfer — From Finance AND From Tech

One of the best things about fintech is that it genuinely values two very different talent pools. You do not need to be a coder with a CFA to compete.

From traditional finance, the most transferable skills are:

• Regulatory knowledge — Understanding how AML, KYC, FINRA, or OCC rules work is rare and valuable at every fintech
• Financial modeling — Knowing how a lending portfolio behaves, how to stress-test a balance sheet, or how to think in basis points
• Client relationship management — Critical for enterprise sales, partnerships, and customer success roles
• Risk intuition — Understanding credit risk, market risk, or operational risk in ways that engineers typically do not

From tech, the most transferable skills are:

• API literacy — Understanding how REST APIs work, reading API docs, thinking in JSON and webhooks
• Data analysis — SQL, Python, and the ability to build dashboards or run A/B tests
• Software development — Coding, system design, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP)
• Systems thinking — Modeling complex dependencies, debugging distributed systems, thinking about failure modes

Skills that cross both worlds — SQL is universal. Excel and Python for data manipulation matter across product, analytics, and risk roles. Clear written communication is underrated and consistently requested by hiring managers at fintechs of all sizes.

How to Break In With No Fintech Experience

The most common mistake is applying for senior fintech roles directly from an unrelated background. A better strategy is to enter through adjacent roles first.

Target adjacent roles — If you are in traditional banking, look for titles like "Fintech Partnerships Analyst," "Product Operations Analyst," or "Implementation Manager" at a mid-stage fintech. These roles do not require fintech experience and build your resume credibility quickly.

Get the right certifications — For credit and lending paths, the CFA signals rigorous financial analysis skills. For compliance, the CAMS (Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist) is the industry standard. For engineers, AWS or GCP cloud certifications show practical infrastructure knowledge relevant to fintech platforms.

Build something or write something — Hiring managers at fintechs respond to demonstrated initiative. If you are an engineer, build a small project using the Stripe API — a payment form, a subscription billing tool, anything that shows you understand payment flows. If you are not an engineer, write about fintech on LinkedIn. Consistent, intelligent commentary on payments, regulation, or neobanks builds visibility with recruiters and founders.

Upskill with structured courses — If you want to get grounded in how the payments industry actually works, the FinTekCafe Digital Payments Masterclass walks through card networks, settlement, dispute resolution, and real-time payment infrastructure with the level of detail you need to speak confidently in interviews.

Where to Find Fintech Jobs

Generic job boards are not the most efficient path. Here is where fintech hiring actually happens.

LinkedIn — Still the highest-volume channel for fintech jobs. Follow the company pages of Stripe, Adyen, Plaid, Coinbase, Brex, and others directly. Turn on job alerts and engage with recruiter content — it signals active interest.

Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) — The best platform for startup and growth-stage fintech jobs. Most listings include equity range and funding stage, which helps you evaluate risk/reward. Particularly strong for Series A–C fintechs.

BuiltIn — BuiltInNYC, BuiltInSF, and BuiltInChicago have curated fintech employer listings with culture pages, benefits breakdowns, and real employee reviews. Useful for understanding what working at a company actually looks like.

Company career pages — For larger fintechs (Stripe, Square, Coinbase, Nubank), the careers page is often the primary posting channel. Bookmark them and check weekly.

Specialized recruiting firms — Options Group and Selby Jennings are two of the most active fintech-focused recruiters in the US and UK. Building a relationship with a fintech recruiter at either firm gives you access to roles that never hit public boards.

Networking in Fintech

Fintech hiring is heavily relationship-driven, particularly at senior levels. The fastest way to get a referral is to be in the room — virtually or physically.

Money20/20 (Las Vegas, October) — The largest payments and fintech conference in the world, with 13,000+ attendees. If you can attend one conference, this is the one. The hallway conversations are more valuable than the main stage talks.

Finovate (New York, May) — A demo-focused conference where companies present live product demos in seven minutes. Excellent for product people and anyone who wants to understand what is actually being built. The format makes it easy to find founders and product leaders.

Sibos (SWIFT's annual conference) — Enterprise banking and financial infrastructure. Less startup-focused, but essential if you are targeting roles at correspondent banks, FMIs, or B2B infrastructure companies.

LinkedIn groups — "Fintech Professionals" and "Women in Fintech" are active communities with job postings, AMAs, and discussions. Engaging consistently in comments builds profile visibility with recruiters.

Online communities and content — Subscribe to Fintech Brainfood (Simon Taylor's newsletter), follow a16z's fintech content on their website, and listen to the Fintech Insider podcast (11:FS). These will keep you current on industry developments and give you talking points in interviews and networking conversations.

Two Real Career Path Examples

Abstract advice only goes so far. Here are two realistic career transitions that play out repeatedly in the industry.

Banking Analyst → Fintech PM at a Lending Startup

A credit analyst at a regional bank spends three years reviewing loan applications and building financial models. She notices that Upstart and Affirm are doing automated credit decisioning using alternative data. She takes an online course in SQL, builds a basic Python script to analyze HMDA data, and starts writing on LinkedIn about the limitations of traditional FICO scoring. She applies for a "Credit Product Analyst" role at a Series B lending startup — not a PM role yet, but adjacent. After 18 months, she transitions internally to an associate PM role. Within two years of leaving the bank, she is a full PM owning the underwriting decisioning product.

Backend Developer → Payments Engineer at a Card Network or Processor

A backend engineer with four years of experience building e-commerce APIs decides to specialize. He reads the Stripe API documentation cover to cover, builds a sample integration handling subscriptions, refunds, and webhook retries, and publishes it on GitHub. He takes the FinTekCafe Digital Payments Masterclass to understand card network economics and settlement timing. He applies for "Payments Engineer" roles at processors like Adyen and Checkout.com, leading with his GitHub project in applications. He gets hired as a mid-level payments engineer and within a year is working on authorization optimization — a role that pays $200K+ total comp at most payments companies.

Key Takeaways

• Fintech is a multi-sector industry — identifying which sub-sector fits your background is the most important first step
• Finance and tech skills both transfer; regulatory knowledge and API literacy are particularly valued
• Entry-level fintech roles often have different titles (analyst, operations, implementation) — apply broadly at first
• Certifications (CAMS, CFA, AWS) make a measurable difference in non-engineering and engineering roles respectively
• Money20/20 and Wellfound are the two highest-ROI investments for networking and job searching respectively
• Building something with a fintech API or writing consistently about fintech on LinkedIn creates inbound recruiter interest faster than cold applications

Related Reading

• 2026 Fintech Salary Guide: Roles, Companies, and Compensation
• Complete Guide: How Payment Networks Work (Visa, Mastercard, RuPay, UPI)
• AI in Fintech: 10 Real Use Cases Making Money Today
• Fintech Product Manager: Role, Skills, and Salary in 2026

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