eFinancialCareers

• Company

  Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

• Location

  Canada-ON-Toronto

• Compensation

  .

• Position Type

  Employee

• Employment type

  Full time

• Updated

  13 Nov 2008

• eFC Ref no

  473591

With assets under management projected to grow to $310 billion within a decade, CPP Investment Board is one of the largest and fastest growing institutional investors in the world. Based in Toronto, the CPP Investment Board is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan by experienced and highly skilled investment professionals. Their job is to prudently invest CPP assets to help pay future pensions.

The Lead, Portfolio Analytics Systems, manages a team of software engineers who design, develop and support quantitative models for cross asset investment strategies. This role partners closely with investment professionals across Public Market Investments’ (PMI) five (5) investment groups, and ensures the delivery of software engineering expertise backed by the infrastructure, architecture and data management capabilities of the broader Information Services team. 

This role manages the software engineering team to meet project and operational objectives, and design PMI’s analytic model systems to achieve goals of agility through re-use, production stability and controls (e.g. source library, change controls, logical security). It oversees software development and integration, maintenance of a coding library and knowledge repository to capture and distribute research documentation across PMI.

This role interacts with various investment and investment operations departments across CPPIB, and maintains a client service responsibility to the PMI leadership team. It must ensure that a partnership relationship is maintained between IS and PMI - and as dictated by CPPIB’s guiding principles of integrity, partnership and high performance – proactively identify and resolve issues to ensure the success of the Portfolio Analytics team in support of PMI’s investment objectives. This role demands the capability to respond to changing investment priorities and work originating from opportunistic investment decisions.

This role provides recommendations to senior management regarding the resources (human, financial, tools, etc.) required to complete assigned projects, and effectively manages change within the organization to transition systems from implementation to stable operations. When implementing new systems, this role takes a comprehensive view of the technology, process and architectural implications of the deliverables, and the change management activities associated with the project. It ensures that support resources are in place to support systems on a 7x24 basis, in conjunction with Infrastructure Management.

Role Specific Accountabilities:

Client Relationship

• Establish and lead a team of co-located application development specialists to provide technical guidance and support for research activities, and software development once model research is completed and systems integration is required.
• Manage stakeholder expectations throughout the research and development lifecycle, paying particular attention to defining effective roles and responsibilities while the co-located, decentralized development model is institutionalized.
• Work closely with investment professionals to understand their needs and adapt flexibly, while maintaining the spirit of the CPPIB project management methodology and SDLC
• Ensure that the Portfolio Analytics Systems team provides responsive business support while adhering to architectural and software design processes required for quality enterprise-level software
• Establish effective communications with leaders of PMI’s 5 investment groups to remain abreast of upcoming priorities, business challenges and opportunities for IS to provide assistance

Application Development and Support

• Promote the use and evolution of a flexible, agile-oriented SDLC which fosters close, transparent communications between IS and PMI investment groups, and across IS
• Organize and manage resource requirements and priorities effectively within the Portfolio Analytics Systems group and in conjunction with management across IS. Create efficient resource allocation plans and team schedules, and manage team resources for high performance
• Ensure on-time delivery of high-quality applications and collaborate effectively with members of the Enterprise Architecture team to implement consistent system architecture and development standards
• Provide 3rd level application support to end-users during and after application deployment, in conjunction with Infrastructure Management

Leadership

• Recruit, motivate and retain a high calibre team of application development specialists who deliver strong software engineering, requirements analysis and client service skills
• Oversee the quality of team members’ work and assist in proactively identifying and resolving issues so that work is of a uniformly high level of quality, across the team
• Provide guidance to team members, and during project status and issue management meetings, to proactively resolve issues and ensure that projects can be delivered on time, on budget and with the expected level of quality
• Set direction and coordinate and motivate stakeholders and staff

Strategy

• Maintain a clear understanding of industry and technology directions/trends, and a solid understanding of competitive best practices and emerging concepts
• Work closely with executive management to ensure sponsorship for systems development initiatives and their alignment to CPPIB’s business plan
• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of PMI’s investment objectives and operational plans, to ensure alignment between IS and PMI

Continuous Improvement

• Proactively find improvement opportunities to streamline business processes or to product better quality software solutions
• Establish and maintain toolsets for code repository, workflow management (e.g. requests) and knowledge management (e.g. Wiki, Sharepoint) to support the research and development work of PMI and the Portfolio Analytics Systems team. Provide documentation for these toolsets and ensure that the community of users is appropriately trained to enable their use
• Identify, measure and analyse a collection of meaningful metrics to measure the quality and responsiveness of the Portfolio Analytics Systems team, relating to project delivery and application support

If you possess the following, we’d like to hear from you:

Educational Credentials

• Bachelors and/or graduate degree in a mathematical discipline or Computer Science

• Financial qualifications such as CSC and/or CFA are an asset

• PMP certification is an asset

Experience

• Proven experience in managing software development teams

• Management experience in an investment management firm and/or investment dealer, including experience supporting applications for capital markets and/or quantitative portfolio management teams

• Financial services experience is desirable

• Experience managing developers in an enterprise environment, following a defined agile-oriented SDLC, with a mixed Wintel and Linux/Solaris platform

Qualities and Competencies

• Proven capabilities to balance between approaching challenges strategically and attending to detail. This is a management role with a significant and visible client service component, but it oversees the delivery of solutions for a high technical business domain where precision is critical

• Capability to develop, maintain and drive decisions based on a broad understanding of CPPIB business objectives and issues and their dependencies on complex information systems application

• Demonstrated ability to develop and foster strong relationships with peers and clients internally

• Ability to work in a high performing culture, work effectively under pressure to meet aggressive deadlines and manage multiple priorities

• Ability to synthesize complexity to enable business and technology decision makers to understand options and trade-offs

• Strong planning and project management skills.

• Effective communication and problem-solving skills.

• Capability to establish credibility with a diverse group of peers and senior executives across investment departments, investment operations, information services and other corporate departments

• Strong service orientation; a track record of responsiveness to business needs within a disciplined but agile environment

• Strong interpersonal and negotiation skills. Excellent written and verbal communication, including the capability to present effectively to technical and/or business audiences

• A self-starter with the ability to lead and provide thought leadership in a cross functional environment

• Exemplify CPPIB’s Guiding Principles – Integrity, Partnership and High Performance

If you are looking for an exciting opportunity and to build a career in an innovative and dynamic investment organization, please submit your resume online.

We thank all applicants for their interest, however only candidates
selected for an interview will be contacted.

CPP Investment Board is an Equal Opportunity Employer.