Business Analyst – Electronic Trading

Quant Capital is urgently looking for an Electronic Trading Business Analyst to join our high profile client. The Business Analyst Role has come around due to an expansion and strategic change and the Business Analyst will report in to the two owners of the business. The firm engages with individual clients as a capital markets consultancy that brings to bear its technology DNA whenever addressing an issue within the client. These engagements range in scope from broad program structure and delivery mechanisms to detailed ‘health checks’ on current technology infrastructure.

The Business Analyst Will:

• Lead key stakeholders to meet the common business programme goals.
• Active requirement gathering, either in one-to-one sessions or in workshops.
• Interaction with Exchanges/Trading Venues to gather market model or message detail.
• Definition and prioritisation of the solution behaviour to meet business requirements.
• Design, definition and proposal of messaging protocol formats.
• Validation of requirements with client business analysts, development and QA teams to ensure a common understanding of requirements.

Our client provides independent expert advice, implementation and remediation for front office electronic trading environments. Their clients include leading investment banks, asset managers and hedge funds. They use well-established and bespoke methodologies to deliver solutions ranging from trading platform reviews to ultra-low latency design and development of front office trading systems. Their engagements span front office engagements within Fixed Income, Equities and FX.

Business Analysts Must Have:

• 4-8 years’ experience working within the buy-side, sell-side, relevant vendor or ECN.
• Experience in one or more of the following across the trading lifecycle: Risk management, Price formation, tiering and distribution, execution, STP.
• A strong background in software development projects and in particular Trading & Front Office applications.
• Experience of Business Analysis around Execution Management Systems / Order Management Systems.
• Knowledge of the FIX Messaging Protocol.
• Understanding of OTC markets and market models.
• Able to work with geographically dispersed teams.
• Knowledge of common Market Data & Trading protocols.
• A structured approach to problem solving.

General Skills:

• The ability to follow the logical path from initiation to completion.
• Attention to detail and the ability/desire to challenge convention.
• Taking a holistic view of a problem – not just corner cases but non-core functions.
• A basic grasp of English (and an absence of jargon).

Basic Skills (a selection of what would interest):

• Terms of Reference.
• Requirements Gathering.
• Process Flow Documentation.
• State / Lifecycle Definition.
• Gap Analysis.
• Test Planning.
• UML.
• BPMN.
• Data Modelling Techniques.
• Analysis Documents: TOR, Requirements Specification, Functional Specification, Test Plan.

My client has a family feel and traditional values but is known as by far the best low latency consultancy in the world. They have recently implemented a FIX standard for Fixed Income Trading. They have been trading for 8 years and have around 40 people in the office so personality fit is important. They are a privately owned debt and VC free entity so equity is a serious option. My client is based in London.