Head of Enterprise Technology in London

Marex is a diversified global financial services platform, providing essential liquidity, market access and infrastructure services to clients in the energy, commodities and financial markets. The Group provides comprehensive breadth and depth of coverage across four core services: Market Making, Clearing, Hedging and Investment Solutions and Agency and Execution. It has a leading franchise in many major metals, energy and agricultural products, executing around 50 million trades and clearing 205 million contracts in 2022. The Group provides access to the world’s major commodity markets, covering a broad range of clients that include some of the largest commodity producers, consumers and traders, banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Marex was established in 2005 but through its subsidiaries can trace its roots in the commodity markets back almost 100 years. Headquartered in London with 36 offices worldwide, the Group has over 1,800 employees across Europe, Asia and America.

The Technology Department delivers differentiation, scalability and security for the business. Technology provides digital tools, software services and infrastructure globally to all business groups. Software development and support teams work in agile ‘streams’ aligned to specific business areas. Our other teams work enterprise-wide to provide critical services including our global service desk, network and system infrastructure, IT operations, security, enterprise architecture and design. The Business Technology function ensures delivery of Technology services to each Marex business or functional area. We partner with the business to optimise their technology stack, prioritise their strategic technology roadmap and drive their software delivery lifecycle. We define and agree change initiatives with the organisation’s business areas and then coordinate delivery against specific acceptance criteria. Each Business Technology team is aligned to one of Marex’s business divisions and works with a corresponding Development team and Application Support team. A global team of implementation resources coordinate and support the technology business streams with delivery.

Based in London, the Head of Enterprise Technology will be responsible for the delivery of Technology services to the CTO and the Technology Department. The Marex Technology Department is looking to scale up the Enterprise engineering team to support the concept of an “Engine Room”. The Engine room will look to provision tooling and platforms to facilitate an increased speed of delivery in the Business Aligned teams. This area will look at centralised delivery of standard services that are required across the business such as Securities Master, Market Data plant, Trade Repository and Quant Lab. There are many more concepts, and the actual path of delivery will be defined in conjunction with the CTO and other business leaders. This role will work closely with the business owner (CTO) and senior stakeholders within Marex business and technology departments to define the requirements for technology delivery.

The role’s other key interfaces are the enterprise stream development and support functions, which have dual reporting lines to this role and a functional head (e.g. Head of Development). The functional head will ensure that standards and processes are common across all business-aligned teams, whilst this role will own the delivery of service. This ownership and engagement with the Business owner and identified senior stakeholders will allow this role to prioritise and deliver in alignment with the defined priorities. The size and makeup of the enterprise stream’s Technology team will be agreed between this role and the Business Owner to ensure a level of service that meets the expectations and allows timely delivery against agreed priorities.

Responsibilities

• Identify and support strategic technological direction for the Marex Engine Room (Enterprise stream), Neon, AI, Data and Portal architectures.
• Work closely with senior stakeholders to prioritise delivery and service.
• Innovate new solutions, ensuring the business is always one step ahead of the competition.
• Leverage the Enterprise Technology to facilitate strategic acquisitions.
• Contribute to the technical direction of the department.
• Research new concepts and technologies.
• Evaluate third party products and tools that are (or may be) used by the team.
• Support Budgeting and Forecasting activities both with the Business Owner and the wider Technology organisation.
• Design delivers cross business stream initiatives for the Engine room.
• Identify opportunities to rationalise platforms across Marex.
• Build and communicate roadmaps that show the high-level delivery approach over coming periods.
• Right-size the Technology footprint in across the Enterprise with the Business Owner for a cost-effective service.
• This includes resourcing levels across the aligned development and support teams.
• Retain alignment to the core Technology Strategy and ensure the Marex Technology footprint is understood during change.
• Prioritise existing vendors and systems where appropriate.
• Create initiatives and epics that capture business deliverables with an agreed set of Acceptance Criteria (the contract).
• Report on the priority/progress/effort/cost of these epics/projects.
• Oversee projects to ensure they are run efficiently and delivered on time and on budget.
• Work closely with Implementation Manager(s) if applicable.
• Prioritise and drive the business requirements.
• Give regular status updates.
• Ensure delivered infrastructure and systems are of production quality and adequately documented for handover to the business and/or support functions.
• Maintain familiarity with the risk, regulatory, audit and compliance requirements that apply to the business.
• Ensure that technology employed adheres to required standards.
• Ensure delivered systems are secure, reliable and scale to meet the demands of a rapidly growing business.
• Help define best software development practices and processes.
• Ensure they are adhered to.
• Encourage an inclusive culture – with an appreciation of complete life cycle and consult all areas that are impacted by change.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Extensive trading and/or brokerage software development and Technical Architecture experience.
• Extensive experience working with Front Office divisions and Senior stakeholders.
• Trade Lifecycle knowledge, Pre-trade, Trade, settlement/clearing, Risk. Full front to back.
• Experience of Trading Technologies, Pricing, Risk and algo trading across all asset classes.
• Knowledge of vendor systems used within Financial Services – specifically in cross business service layer.
• Experience of delivering large scale systems and defining/controlling standards for all.
• Vendor management experience – including delivery of large, vendor-centric projects. Specifically, ION.
• Product Development Experience in an Agile environment.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Delivery focussed, displaying entrepreneurial and leadership skills.
• Resilient in a fast-paced environment – able to take responsibility.
• Architecting secure, reliable and scalable infrastructure and software.

Desirable Skills & Experience

• AI application within Financial Services organisations.
• Project planning and coordination.
• Microsoft Technologies, Cloud services, hosting and deployment.
• Experience working in a regulated environment and knowledge of the associated risk and compliance requirements.
• A collaborative team player, approachable, self-efficient and influences a positive work environment.
• Demonstrates curiosity.
• Resilient in a challenging, fast-paced environment.
• Ability to take a high level of responsibility in a fast-paced and high-volume environment.
• Excels at building relationships, networking and influencing others.
• Strategic collaborator with insight and agility, able to anticipate future challenges, ensuring operational effectiveness.

If you’re forging a career in this area and are looking for your next step, get in touch! Marex is fully committed to being an inclusive employer and providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all. We will provide reasonable adjustments to remove any disadvantage to you being considered for this role. We value the differences that a diverse workforce brings to the company. We welcome applications from candidates returning to the workforce. Also, Marex is committed to avoiding circumstances in which the appearance or possibility of conflicts of interest may exist within the hiring process. If you would like to receive any information in a different way or would like us to do anything differently to help you, please include it in your application.