Last Friday, FactSet came to CDS to discuss exciting positions in machine learning and NLP for our students. Founded in 1978, FactSet creates software that tracks top global market trends to help professionals in hedge funds and investment banks advise their clients.
FactSet is a promising asset to the finance industry because its software addresses their most urgent needs: it can not only scan, record, and summarize thousands of company financial records in seconds, but it also records and aggregates financial information from various online platforms in real-time to help professionals stay one step ahead.
Key to FactSet’s prowess is their small but strong machine learning and NLP team, which is made up of seventeen employees in New York, and another six in Hyderabad, India. The team has recently been fine-tuning their machine translator to translate 27 languages into English so that foreign financial reports, many of which contain highly specific financial jargon that regular online translators cannot fully articulate, can be understood. Built on Python, this machine translator will become a boon to FactSet’s software, although script languages like Arabic and Chinese still require further attention.
Their concern with translatability shares similarities with the research that professors at our very own Center are investigating. For students who have already developed an interest in machine learning and translation after working with professors, working for FactSet is an attractive option.
by Cherrie Kwok