How to leverage engineering experience

Are you a Comp. E or CS major? You could easily land a role as a quant developer at a bank assuming you're in a top 5-10 MFE/MSF program or were in a top 5-10 undergrad program. Honestly, you probably would know how it worked in CS- they sit you down for an interview and make sure you know how to program by drilling you on algorithms, software engineering, and math.

I know a few people in Engineering at Illinois who got hired directly into Quant roles at a few hedge funds, if that's something that might interest you. The MSF degree would have to be extremely math heavy and be from a top five school for you to have a good shot at landing a quant position, but it might be something to look into.

If a quant position does not sound appealing to you and you want to go into something like sales or maybe a TA role, you will have to fight against the "nerdy engineer" stereotype. Even us programmers are kinda aggressive- you have to come off as aggressive, decisive, and tough under pressure to land a TA gig. But the trading floor can always use someone who's numerate. Research usually can too, and it might also be a good fit.