[4] Financial engineering plays a key role in a bank's customer-driven derivatives business[5] — delivering bespoke OTC-contracts and "exotics", and implementing various structured products — which encompasses quantitative modelling, quantitative programming and risk managing financial products in compliance with the regulations and Basel capital/liquidity requirements.
[7] In the broadest sense, anyone who uses technical tools in finance could be called a financial engineer, for example any computer programmer in a bank or any statistician in a government economic bureau.
[8] However, most practitioners restrict the term to someone educated in the full range of tools of modern finance and whose work is informed by financial theory.
[13] Quantitative analyst ("Quant") is a broad term that covers any person who uses math for practical purposes, including financial engineers.
[17] Financial "rocket scientists" were usually trained in applied mathematics, statistics or finance and spent their entire careers in risk-taking.
The number and size of programs has grown rapidly, to the extent that some now use the term "financial engineer" to refer to a graduate in the field.