eFinancialCareers

• Company

  Markit

• Location

  New York, NY, 10018

• Compensation

  SAlary Commensutate with Experience

• Position Type

  Permanent

• Employment type

  Full time

• Updated

  12 Oct 2009

• eFC Ref no

  559106

Markit is seeking an experienced Web developer to join the Structured Finance team. This person will work closely with existing team members to develop and manage a comprehensive browser-based front end to Structured Finance products and services.

Department Overview

Structured Finance at Markit has a team of 25 developers supporting a 100 person product team. The development team is spread between NYC (2/3) and London (1/3). The team is highly innovative, using new and exciting tools and methodologies to deliver products in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. Developers liaise directly with product managers, analysts, and customers to elicit use cases and specifications, and turn these into working features in an environment that stresses best of breed solutions and innovation.

The broader Structured Finance team provides software and services to financial market participants in the complex context of structured products backed by mortgages and loans on other types of assets (auto, student loan, credit card, etc.).

Company overview

Markit is a financial information services company with more than 1,200 employees in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Over 1,500 financial institutions use our independent services to manage risk, improve operational efficiency and meet regulatory requirements.

Markit was founded in 2001 as the first independent source of credit derivative pricing. Today, our data, valuations and trade processing services are regarded as the market standard in the global financial markets.

Our clients include investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers, central banks, regulators, rating agencies and insurance companies. We provide them with round-the-clock support from our offices in London, New York, Dallas, White Plains, Toronto, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney.

Markit was the fastest growing private company in the UK in 2008 (Source: 2008 Real Business/LDC Hot 100.)

Position summary

Markit is seeking an experienced Web developer to join the Structured Finance team. This person will work closely with existing team members to develop and manage a comprehensive browser-based front end to Structured Finance products and services, with emphasis on customer utility, ease of use, testability, and leveraging existing components to accomplish timely delivery of software products according to the business schedule.

The role will require tight collaboration with product managers and expert business analysts to improve and evolve the existing front end to meet current and future business needs.

General and deep experience with Web concepts and technologies is a must, with particular focus on AJAX-based pages, via GWT. Knowledge of relational database theory, SQL, stored procedures and other data manipulation technologies is also necessary. Experience of unit test and acceptance test tools and ability to build custom test tools would be a considerable advantage, as front ends are often hard to test in an automated fashion, and building them to be testable is an important consideration.

Knowledge of Structured Finance business is a plus, but not necessary for the role. This position will suit candidates who enjoy both the technical and business aspects of developing, testing, and deploying Web software to a schedule in an environment of high visibility and transparency around deliverables, business needs, and customer value.

This person will report directly to the Head of Web Front End development for Markit Structured Finance

Duties & accountabilities

• Work with product team and customers to define their use cases and SLA’s, advising in the crafting of tests and specifications that determine what is to be delivered
• Build robust, high-throughput, client-facing Web data and computational applications (or extend features of existing ones) in the context of the GWT framework for delivery of AJAX-enabled web content coded in Java and JavaScript.
• Work with testers to ensure the right test coverage is achieved for a release, from unit to acceptance test level
• Coordinate with backend and database developers to ensure that data and computational transactions are factored as appropriate into modern, services-based architecture.
• Assist testers to prepare test plans, test scripts and test cases based on requirements specifications
• Assist in ensuring that defects and incidents are identified, prioritised and dealt with, and that any new versions of software are released in a controlled and timely manner
• Manage risk and take contingency action where necessary

• Input to the firm-wide core web development framework(s)

  Business Competencies

Education and experience

• University graduate or equivalent, preferably in a quantitative degree: maths, sciences, computing or finance-related degree
• Experience of agile development methodologies, e.g. XP, TDD, Scrum
• Strong scripting / programming ability in relevant tools and languages, e.g. Java, JavaScript, GWT, Groovy, etc.
• Experience with web application integration, system and regression testing, ideally in a financial environment, with a blend of manual and automated tools
• Strong SQL to interrogate and manipulate data when developing
• Excellent understanding of software systems and development
• Experience and comfort with agile test tools, e.g. JUnit and Fitnesse

Management Experience

• Experience of leading small teams, preferably within an agile environment (desirable)

Commercial Awareness

• Experience and understanding of the web development process, project lifecycles, and techniques for managing the corner cases that inevitably arise
• Knowledge and experience of financial markets, particularly structured finance products

Personal competencies

Personal impact

• High standard of written or diagrammed design/specifation/testwriting work
• Strong analytical and mathematical skills
• Able to work independently with minimal supervision
• Display energy, drive and stamina Open minded, flexible and willing to adapt to changing situations
• Focused on delivery
• Open-minded and flexible
• Must be an excellent communicator both written and verbal

Communication

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Teamwork

• Must be able to work in a collaborative team environment.