Head of Investment Management Systems and Development recruitment

Our firm will employ a highly trained and effective leader that has made a career of and been successful in identifying and implementing fully integrated technical support systems at all levels of the organization. The individual will direct the planning, implementation, support, and maintenance of enterprise systems in support of business operations in order to improve cost effectiveness, service quality and business growth.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

The Candidate will be responsible for leading the design, development and implementation of software solutions, which serve as the backbone for the businesses. They will:

• Champion, architect and implement the next-generation of business systems infrastructure, including full responsibility for creating and publishing roadmaps and design documents

• Partner with Investment Management, Operations and IT Infrastructure in defining technology requirements, timelines and success criteria

• Effectively communicate with the user community on project progress, including issues concerns

• Provide expertise for architectural design review and lead the architecture, design, development and delivery of the Technology Platform

• Provide expert level IT project management to deliver solutions on time, within budget, and with agreed upon functionality and quality

• Implement transparent and sustainable Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies to be adhered to on all projects/initiatives, including and not limited to the following:

• Utilize subject matter experts where appropriate to define requirements and recommendations/solutions

• Manage cross-functional teams of highly skilled and motivated development resources

• Work with management to ensure adequate resources are in place and maintain appropriate staffing and contractor resource model to manage workload  

• Identify, manage, and mitigate technical risks including externally mandated regulatory and compliance risk

• Administrative responsibilities include demand planning, maintaining resource allocations, providing performance feedback, merit/bonus reviews, and development plans

SYSTEMS SUPPORT

• Oversee application support for all investment systems including ownership and accountability for the operation, monitoring and integrity of the technology platforms and any 24/7 availability needs

• Responsible for tactical enhancements, application upgrades, new application rollouts, maintenance, and performance tuning of investment systems

• Must provide a depth of both business and technology service while acting as a top level escalation point to the whole organization

• Resolve technology issues that affect service to the users and their businesses and evaluate solutions and alternatives with input from other leaders in the organization

• Be the subject matter expert who understands the end-to-end technical and operational environment and design

• Interact at all levels of the organization, develop strong relationships with management, and meet with management to negotiate resources, budget, and deliverables

• Establish appropriate touch-points with the business and Infrastructure IT teams to ensure regular service/delivery satisfaction, prioritization, and new business/activity reviews 

• Exhibit exceptional leadership abilities and proactive problem solving skills, while being able to understand issues, determine impact and decide on a resolution to mitigate active service interruptions

• Be savvy on IT industry trends and best practices to prescribe the appropriate support vision/model

• Establish support and tracking mechanisms for business and after hours system processing

• Track and report incident and problem management to senior leadership

• Develop strong relationships with software vendors, monitor vendor service levels, report status of vendor relationships to executive management, and work with vendor support and development organizations ensuring vendor focus on resolution of issues and strategic enhancements

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• 10+ years of solid experience in Business Application Software design, development and production support

• Investment management industry experience required, preferably buy-side asset management

• In-depth support knowledge of financial services or asset management business and customer facing applications, preferably in fixed income and derivative products

• Experience and understanding of risk analysis, fund performance measurement, attribution, and reporting is highly desirable

• Progressive experience supporting highly available, business critical environments

• Experience with thin-client technologies, Terminal Services, and Citrix Metaframe

• Experience and knowledge of information security and data leakage such as User Authentication and Authorization, Antivirus programs, Spam Filters, and Web monitoring

• Extensive knowledge of and experience with multiple client/server operating platforms and technologies, with emphasis on Microsoft products, and how they interrelate and integrate

• Detailed knowledge of transactional vs. batch processing, parallel processing (synchronous/asynchronous) and load balancing is a plus

• Excellent management skills and leadership abilities, with a proven record of product and service delivery, strategic planning, effecting change, building and managing strong technology teams, and resource management

• Highly collaborative working style, strong interpersonal capabilities and relationship building; proven ability to manage diverse client and stakeholder relationships, and to collaborate effectively with customers and colleagues

• Excellent influence and negotiation skills; ability to facilitate discussions around complex issues and bring them to resolution

• Planning and budgeting

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year college or university

• Post graduate work, such as financial certification, or master's degree a plus

TECHNICAL

• Financial application experience a must, notably Charles River, PORTIA, and Bloomberg

• Knowledge of enterprise systems and technology including ETL, reporting, and data centralization

• Languages : C#, VB, ASP, .Net, RDBMS and tools (preferably Microsoft SQL Server, SSRS-Reporting Services, SSIS, SQL, and stored procedures), XML, and Windows command-line batch scripting

• Web technology: IIS, Apache, and web services

• Batch scheduling and tools experience

• Strong understanding of data structures and content is required

• Have at least 10 years relevant experience, gained within a demanding Software Development environment where scalability, flexibility and availability are crucial to the business

• Have developed scalable architecture that meets the needs of massive data in a distributed computing environment

• Be a strong technologist current with best practices in software architecture and design of large scale systems