eFinancialCareers

• Company

  NationStaff, Inc.

• Location

  New York, NY

• Compensation

  Base + Bonus + Benefits + Vacation

• Position Type

  Permanent

• Employment type

  Full time

• Updated

  04 Nov 2009

• eFC Ref no

  587104

Business Description

The role is in Global Credit Trading Technology group, which is responsible for delivering technology to the Credit desk. The role is in a team that provides IT solutions to FO, MO and BAC to manage the Credit desk  risk and trading activities.  Some of the systems developed by the team include FDR, 3DStatic and Morpheus in the Market data area, and RAT in the risk calculation area.

Position Description

This individual will have primary responsibility for delivering key projects. These projects usually span multiple systems within both the risk and market data spaces and require a significant deal of coordinating ability. The individual will typically take the lead on a single project at any given time.

An example of such a key project would include enabling loan products to be risk managed through their strategic platforms. The PM will drive the initiative from inception and will typically work directly with a project BA. The BA will take responsibility for ensuring that the intended solution will solve the business problem and also that it will add the intended value to the end-users and/or IT teams as predicted at the outset.

This role interacts primarily with different groups in FO (i.e. traders, quants, and risk management teams), but also BAC groups (book runners and CTB groups). Within the IT arena, the role will interact with the various system development teams (those responsible for developing the requested functionality), and also with the production services group who are responsible for supporting the service once it has been released to production. It is this leading role which is responsible for coordinating all these groups to ensure the successful end-to-end delivery of the projects.

Detailed responsibilities include:

• The direct manager for the whole development lifecycle of the project including specification, design, build, testing, deployment and production service support.
•  Managing and building a strong partnership with users and IT development teams.
• Managing the delivery of enhancements to various systems (from a high-level perspective) in conjunction with the system PM and development leads.
• Working with the project BA, system PMs and development leads to estimate timelines for delivery by creating accurate implementation plans. Also to clearly communicate this plan (on a frequent basis) to each of the teams involved and to the end users (typically FO and BAC).
• Reduce project risk by breaking the deliveries into smaller iterations/components/milestones (where possible) even if it means pushing out the final end date.
• Manage business users expectations for the delivery dates of expected functionality provided the project - these expectations are usually earlier than the planned dates and it is expected that this role push back (within reason) when pressure is being applied or when shortcuts are being proposed to bring in delivery dates.
• Constantly drive risks associated with the project to a state whereby mitigation procedures are in place, and escalate BEFORE it may not be possible to deliver the system to the original plan.
• Periodically communicating progress according to plans and associated risks to senior IT management.
• Working with the development managers to ensure that the technical requirements meet support, resilience, scalability, maintenance, and operational needs.
• Working with the project BA to ensure that the business requirements will be met by delivering the project, and that the original benefits are to be realized post delivery of the project.
• Working with regional IT groups for software implementation, post go-live issue resolution and smooth handover to their support team
• Validate the level of QA testing being provided by the development teams to ensure that integration testing and UAT do not bring up any unexpected surprises.
• Ensuring that the users are correctly trained to use solutions being delivered by the project.
• Drive the UAT process and business acceptance procedure. Coordinating the UAT efforts required by the businesses and ensure that their resources are available when required for testing.
• Manage the provision and stability of the end-to-end environments required for both UAT and production.
• Working with the other project managers in the group to ensure that the PM methodologies are consistent and are being implemented to the agreed standard - also helping out with constantly evaluating these standards and proposing improvements.

Job Requirements

Essential Skills:

• Five years of financial services industry experience
• Three years project managing medium to large sized software development projects
• Hands-on business and systems knowledge gained in a front office environment.
• Three years knowledge of derivatives in a front office / controlling environment.
• A strong professional presence with the ability to communicate well with traders, middle office and IT developers.
• Able to multi-task and cope well with multiple high-pressure situations and curve balls being thrown.
• Able to deal with constantly changing / very dynamic environment
• Pro-activity nature essential as the role is to drive projects, not to wait and then react to problems at a later stage.
• Strong PM methodology skills are essential. This is an environment whereby a high-level of discipline and process is required in order to successfully deliver these projects. Not typically looking for someone who was an IT developer and has recently taken the next step into project management. Looking for someone who is passionate about project management.

Preferable Skills:

• Prior experience of working in Credit derivative risk and market data projects delivering projects to FO.

Education / Qualifications Req:

• Degree in a numerate/IT field required.