Jason Strimpel Email & Phone Number

When I was 18 I made two decisions that changed my life: I learned how to code and traded my first stock.The code was PHP - and it was awful. The stock was MSFT - and I lost money.But I was hooked.I wanted nothing more than to use code to help me trade. To be a quant.So for the next 10 years, I followed the conventional advice:• Get a degree in business (double major in finance and econ)• Get a master's degree (I got a $90,000 master's degree in finance)• Get industry experience (I traded futures and CVA for a hedge fund and a bank)But I still couldn't break into quant finance.The problem?I didn't have a Ph.D., I didn't have a computer science degree, and I thought I needed both.I started trading options non-professionally and my first trade lost $8,960. I realized I needed more than simple Excel spreadsheets to win.I didn't want to pay the $2,000 for MATLAB, so I became obsessed with Python. I took tutorial after tutorial only to be in the same place I started. I got frustrated and quit.Then I asked myself this question:"What if I learned just enough Python to build a simple backtesting framework"? (This was way before all the frameworks we have today.)And I learned just enough Python to build a simple backtesting framework.And guess what?It worked!Gone was my imposter syndrome. Gone was being overwhelmed with where to start. Gone was getting stuck in tutorial hell.And the best part? I was hooked - again! I had a clear goal in mind and regained the momentum to get started with Python for quant finance.Fast forward 10 years and I've worked as a risk quant for an energy derivatives trading firm, a chief information officer for an agricultural trading firm, and head of data science and analytics for a metals trading firm. (I was even a fintech venture capital investor!)Now (after 20 years) I work at Amazon Web Services and build quant code and trade in my free time.

Listed skills include Leadership, Banking, Stakeholder Management, Data Strategy, and 32 others.