Investment Bank Technology Analyst PDF Print E-mail
I began my career with JPMorgan right out NTU in 2004 after graduating with an honours degree in Computer Engineering. I had been interested in the financial markets since the early years of my university and decided that this was the industry I wanted a career in. I capitalized on the graduate recruitment cycle the company organized on campus before I graduated. Fortunately I managed to confirm my place prior to graduation. I work in the technology organization which supports the investment bank across the whole of Asia and more specifically, I work within the fixed income domain. In layman terms, I support a suite of trading systems that the business is very heavily dependent on. My work ranges from ensuring these systems are up and running fine to embarking on long-term projects to meet new business requirements for our users, who are our clients. Regardless, this work is rather unpredictable as almost anything can happen in such a fast-paced industry where every second means money. It is coming close to 2 years now and I must say it has been a very interesting and exciting experience which has given me a tremendous opportunity to learn and grow. Some of the highlights of my experience thus far include meeting all sorts of people (and characters!) across various departments and countries at various times of the day (yes, even at 3am at times when someone in New York may suddenly run into problems with systems we support). The unpredictable nature of my work has also seen me scramble to Tokyo on an urgent business trip with barely 36 hours notice and on a long trip to London where one can really feel the buzz of the financial markets.

As it is hard to encapsulate my experience in just an article, let me instead give you an insight into a typical day of a Technology Analyst with a global investment bank.

{mospagebreak title=0700 hrs&heading=The first page}0700 Alarm rings, I wake up, take a quick shower, grab a light breakfast from home and head off to town on the MRT. It’s a good 30 minute ride and it’s a perfect chance to hit dreamland again.

0830 I reach the office and as expected, a barrage of 200 emails have bombarded my inbox. No I’ve not been spammed. Being on the technology side, you are the ‘privileged’ recipient of various system generated emails that run through the day and night, most of which is a status check on the health of a particular system. Notifications such as these are key to preempting technical problems well in advance of them wrecking havoc in the business.

0930 I quickly skim through the system generated emails and work on an enquiry from developers in Glasgow who are working with me on enhancing one of the trading systems to enable traders in Tokyo to start trading on a new product. Typical of an MNC, folks in one corner of the world work with someone else in another corner to ultimately deliver something to a client in another corner altogether. this adverse time zone differences play a critical part in project management, one of the core skils required for someone in my role.

1000 I am interrupted by one of our users in Hong Kong over our internal ‘MSN messenger’. She notices that prices for certain government bonds have been calculated incorrectly in her spreadsheet and that the trader needs this to be resolved immediately. I quickly gather more details on the issue and dive straight into it. Situations like these call for both communication skills and an ability to multi task as only seconds ago I was deep in thoughts on a project.

1030 After investigating the code running behind the spreadsheets, I discover what appears to be a bug in the pricing software. I immediately devise a fix and get the user to test it before applying it to the actual spreadsheet. Problem solved. In situations like these where the bug is fairly simple to discover, the turnaround time to recovery is fairly quick. In other situations, critical bugs in major systems may involve much more investigation and counterparts around the globe coming together to deploy a solution.

{mospagebreak title=1230 hrs&heading=The first page} 1230 I get back to working on my project and eventually reply to my counterparts in London. I’ll have to wait for quite a while before I get a response from them as they are 8 hours behind. I tie up some other administrative documentation and break for lunch. As I am on the summer internship committee, I have organized a series of lunchtime presentations to be made by the interns who are just here for 12 weeks. About 25 interns, managers and HR folks assemble in a conference room and we kick off the informal session over some lunch ordered in.

1345 After an interesting session (and meal!) where interns shared their experiences, I rush back to my desk to catch up on emails and prepare for a conference call with folks in Tokyo. This monthly meeting is a checkpoint to prioritise new projects and give an update on ongoing ones. Users of our systems have a whole bunch of new requirements but as there are only so many of us to go around, prioritization and negotiation skills are key. I dial in from my desk and give my inputs while preparing to implement a new report for a user in Korea. He had requested a specific report for regulatory purposes and it was a rather interesting piece of work as I got a chance to learn about the intricacies of how repurchase agreements are traded.

1500 The call has ended and I head down to the trading floor to give a brief demo to a couple of new traders and salespeople on our trading system. As this is a key system for them to monitor their risk, they show keen interest and throw a few questions, 1 of which I had to do some digging to reply.

1600 I stop over at the lounge to grab a cup of coffee. I bump into one of my colleagues in another department who is helping me with a welfare activity next month. We are planning to hold a movie screening for the staff and we’re debating over Pirates of the Carribbean and Superman Returns. We decide to let the welfare committee vote over email. I then head back to my desk to answer a few voicemails. Some users from Mumbai are setting up a new product in the system and they are unsure about certain fields. After some initial analysis, it turns out those fields pertain to specific market conventions. I hold a quick call with them to explain what needs to be done and it’s a wrap. I then get down to working on a tool I have been developing for traders in Singapore. Business is picking up and they need a scalable solution to reduce the manual work being done by the trade processing folks. A bug in the software has been stalling my progress for the last 2 hours of effort I spent yesterday. In situations like that its sometimes good to take a step back from the problem to go do something else and come back. With a clearer mind you are able to reassess the situation and attack the problem with renewed vigour. True enough I nail the bug. It was due to some incorrect logic design. After checking with a senior colleague of mine, we come up with what seems to be a much better solution. Yet another reason why quality assurance on projects is a must.

{mospagebreak title=1800 hrs&heading=The first page} 1800 Folks in London have replied and that too with some other news. One of them will be in town next week for a management meeting and has asked us to pen down an agenda on what we might like him to share with us. This person is the key senior developer for all our business projects in Asia. As such he has a wealth of information and experience that would be worth sharing. My and my colleagues have a casual discussion and one of them sends off a brief note on what we might like.

1830 The market has closed and the buzz seems to have simmered down. Although work officially ends at 6pm, it’s very rare to be free by then. Most often, its only after 6pm can you get down to catching up on work as during market hours one thing or another may pull you away from whatever you are doing. I start work on a project for the business in Australia. this is a totally new project and my first task is to analyse what needs to be done at a high level overview before coming up with a timeline and committing to dates. The planning stage in a project is critical as once you commit to dates, you are expected to meet them. The golden rule is to always keep a buffer of time in your planning and thereafter to underpromise and overdeliver.

2000 Its 8pm and im getting a hunger pang. Enough is enough and I call it a day. I hop onto the train, head back for dinner, relax by listening to music and flipping through the papers.

0030 I pack my gym bag for tomorrow and off to bed!
 

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