Goldman Sachs is targeting new schools in its hunt for engineers

As we’ve reported in the past few weeks, Goldman Sachs has big plans for its technology (engineering) division. Engineers already account for around 25% of the firm’s headcount and as Goldman moves to become more of a ‘platform business’ this is proportion is likely to increase. As a sign of things to come, for example, 48% of the 2,160 openings for experienced hires at the firm are currently in the engineering division.

Many of Goldman’s technology hires come in at the graduate trainee level, where around 40% of Goldman’s recruits are majors in STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects and the graduate recruitment team is therefore tasked with scouring the world for the best recruits. Last January, Goldman increased pay for its first year technologists with postgraduate qualifications in London to £98k in an attempt to make its recruiters’ jobs easier. 

Which schools does Goldman hire its graduate technologists from? In London, existing staff are drawn from usual suspects like London’s Imperial College, UCL, the University of Bath, and Cambridge University. In the U.S., preferred schools include New York University, Rutgers, UPenn, Cornell and Berkeley. A high proportion of Goldman’s U.S. engineering trainees completed first degrees overseas before studying for a masters and then joining the firm on an H1B visa. Goldman pays H1B visa analysts salaries of around $100k in NYC, but as little as $50k in Dallas and Salt Lake City, where tech staff are typically based.

As demand for entry-level technologists increases, there are signs that Goldman is casting its technology hiring net wider than before. This year, Goldman’s engineering recruiters have visited a variety of schools in Germany, including: RWTH Aachen University, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH), Berlin, Technische Fachhochschule Berlin (TFH), Dresden, Technische Universität Dresden, Freiberg (Sachsen), Technische Universität Bergakademie, Friedrich Alexander Universitat, Karlsruhe, Fachhochschule Karlsruhe, and the Hochschule für Technik at the University of Stuggart. Suddenly, German technologists are on the hiring map.

The firm is also looking for engineering students in Africa, with recruitment events in Ghana and Nigeria. The firm ran its first African engineering recruitment initiative in 2017, and earlier this year ran a program for 60 students from Ghana and 73 from Nigeria. A similar event is being repeated in February 2020. Many previous participants have joined Goldman full time.

Even as Goldman expands its engineering recruitment net, it can’t visit every school. Increasingly, though, this doesn’t matter. These days, the firm identifies top technologists using Hackerrank and it’s running two virtual Hackerrank preparatory sessions later this week, on December 18th and 19th to help engineering students at all schools to get ahead.

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