Feeling lost in my role, looking for a move as a Henry. Any ideas on what to do?
I work as a data scientist in an investment bank in London, not a bulge bracket but a decent presence here and globally. My role is in the back office, so i’m mostly surrounded by accountants, treasury teams, corporate finance and others, so all the work I do is on accounting data making models. In my early 30s.
i‘ve been in the role for 4 years now, salary with total comp is around 90K base + 10-20K bonus depending on how the function has performed.
Prior to this was in a central bank and gov, same role, total years there was 6 years experience so in total 10 years experience.
however more recently, i’ve become dissatisfied with my role in general, i feel like I am stuck in a rut, not learning enough on one hand, but equally not working on any interesting projects either. Yes I have spoken to management, but its not really possible to work on other projects or across the Front to Back office.
i feel like I have been spinning my wheels the past 4 years, I haven’t gained any new skills in this role, other than the name and salary i’ve been complacent. my exisiting skills have deteriorated quite a bit as I mostly so emails and other non technical stuff.
I did try to move to front office as a quant analyst, but the MD here told me that someone with my skills doesn’t fit their criteria - PhD, or MSc, i have a BSc in Maths only.
shall i switch to something that interests me like quant developer? I like the world of finance, particularly the front office markets. I’m not a fan of back office accounting or finance practises and know another Data Science role will pidgeonhole me into a lackluster role. i dont like doing data science roles as its never what it states and the salaries are absurdly low!
what do i do?
Posted Feb 20, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC