There are tons of posts from people leaving engineering jobs to pursue the finance industry. Besides some quant skills, is there much from an engineering background that can carryover to finance?
Coming from an engineering background myself, I feel the only advantage is the foundation equiped to study finance topics (which may be complex at times), in terms of learning to adapt to new concepts. Seriously, a typical 3-4 years of engineering education does not expose oneself to the detailed financial accounting, fixed income, derivatives, corporate finance or equity investments topics. However, I feel the advantage will be the ability to pick things at a faster rate even if things are alien to them. For me, I choose to take on an accounting path (CPA) first as I am a firm believer that strong foundation in accounting will bring me in good stead. As I embarked on this dec level 1 exams, I feel that both engineering and accounting skills set helps me tremendously not only in FSA and Quant but other areas.