M&A / PE —> quant career change - London

I’m considering a career change to a financial engineering/quantitative analyst role in London and I’m looking for some advice.

I’ve worked in M&A and private equity for the past 8 years and have enjoyed my time, but need a more intellectual challenge. I was thinking of doing a computational / mathematical finance course to facilitate the move and Oxford/LSE are obvious candidates in the UK.

I have an engineering degree from Cambridge which covered what I suspect are the most reverent topics (e.g. calculus/PDEs, stats & probabilities, linear algebra), and with a bit of revision I’m sure i could handle the maths.

I have two key questions: - Are these degrees respected in industry and likely to get me in the door for top-tier jobs? Are there any other institutions worth considering? - What should expectations be for starting comp and how is this expected to progress in the first few years?

Any words of advice would be much appreciated!