Career choice is one of the most important decisions in an individual’s life, and it often starts with the intention to be employed or self-employed. Self-employment has been used synonymously with entrepreneurship although the two concepts are not completely identical. This study highlights the different definitions associated with self-employment intention, and then refers to self-employment intention as the intention to become own-account workers, contractors or independent professionals. We further contribute to existing literature by demonstrating the career intention among employees whose career context is different, and so is their career intention, compared to prior research done among students. This study examines whether the self-employment intention among employees is determined by their level of financial knowledge and financial risk tolerance. Using an online survey sample of 188 Cambodian participants who are currently employed, we found that financial risk tolerance, rather than financial knowledge positive correlates to self-employment intention. Our control variables include demographic variables such as education level, age, and years of working experience are all found to have significant correlation to self-employment intention. We discuss the implication of the results and limitation in the final section.

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