The first graduates from UCL’s one-year MSc in Financial Computing are about to hit the investment banking tech jobs market. They could edge out less well qualified applicants in what’s already an overcrowded space.

A class of 45 students is about to complete the course, run in combination with investment banks Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

According to Christopher Clack, head of the programme at UCL, they are versed in rare skill-sets like grid computing, graphical user interfaces, and data visualisation platforms.

Clack told the annual Dealing With Technology conference last week that after graduating, the UCL students spend three months working in banks on projects which “push the envelope of what the investment banks do”. At the end of the three months, there’s a possibility of a job offer.

How can you get onto this course? The good news is that it’s not restricted to IT whiz kids: many of the current crop of graduates studied subjects like law, linguistics or journalism at an undergraduate level. It’s also open to people who have taken a career break, or who are looking for a change in direction. And, in a bid to attract more women to the IT space, 45% of the current intake are female.

Arvinder Mudhar, programme lecturer and CTO of investment banking technology for Merrill Lynch, says: “They are people who have started someplace else with a different mind-set and moved into becoming a deep programmer.”

Should everyone else be sweating as a new breed of elite developer enters the employment market? Not necessarily – the course is geared towards financial services, but some grads have their sights set elsewhere.

Mudhar says: “Speaking to a number of recent graduates, they want to deal with things like earthquake modelling because it actually saves lives. They understand the lure of investment banking, but they’d rather be in Guatemala looking at volcanoes.”