SUMMARY:

• Growth - Focused IT Leadership in High-Frequency Trading EnvironmentsStrategic Planning & Prioritization - Vendor Strategy & Negotiations - Business Continuity - Executive Collaboration
• Compliance Strategy - Highly Available Systems - Governance - Business Case Development - QA Standards
• Strategic Business and Technology Leadership of impact to Confidential, with insight to performance via regular trading exchange dialogue to ensure software alignment and optimization.
• Cost-Saving Vendor Agreements, including $1.5M reduction via renegotiation (identical service levels).
• Budget Management and Planning for $5M+ in annual software development, licensing, and support, plus projects of up to $9M for systems / networking and trading exchange connectivity
• Technology-Agnostic, Strategic Decisions reducing latency (30,000% improvement in response time).
• Development Project Turnarounds achieved by setting clear vision, eliminating siloed practices, working closely with business users, and raising respect among teams with low morale.
• Financial Industry Expertise exemplified as co-founder of RapiData trading data firm.

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY:

Confidential, Glenview, IL

Director of IT and Development

Responsibilities:

• Facilitated global, comprehensive support and systems infrastructures key to competitive edge as trusted executive advisor - transforming staff into motivated IT teams and turning around software development / quality challenges. Collaborated with executives and stakeholders to formulate and drive technical design for trading software, co-location facilities (impacting systems performance), and low-latency resilient networks. Oversaw time-critical systems monitoring and support to production trading operations.
• Built business case for IT investments pivotal to trading system performance, with presentations to CEO. Worked with trading exchanges to understand order matching process and direct related software changes.
• Maintained 100% compliance - selling and delivering new compliance mindset affecting IT and stakeholders.
• Expanded HQ office, handling all communications, power, hardware site, and wiring decisions for trading floor.
• Spearheaded co-location facility build-outs worldwide for proximity to trading exchanges; chose optimum telecom carriers / paths, network infrastructures, and protocols based on latency and redundancy requirements.

Confidential

Director of IT and Development

Responsibilities:

• Built high-productivity team of developers, quantitative analysts, QA analysts, and systems / network engineers, improving retention and morale with collaborative team atmosphere. Mentored employees in business and technical tasks, with “team-first” approach eliciting strong sense of loyalty.
• Quickly turned around software development efforts, setting clearly defined, big-picture strategy and providing tools for success instrumental in achieving profitability in 4 months.
• Improved systems consistency by tightening change control procedures.
• Set stringent SLA terms for production trading environment performance and availability. Created QA standards instrumental in preventing costly trading process errors, with team cross-training to promote problem-solving.
• Guided full contingency and recovery strategies critical to seamless operations in high-pressure settings, establishing redundant servers, business continuity plans, and escalation procedures.
• Built mutually beneficial vendor and exchange relationships key to quick problem resolution; gained insight on complex trading systems processing and connectivity.
• Boosted performance and reliability, with business case and oversight of strategic projects for maximum effect.
• Led trading software migration (Windows to Linux) for improved speed (300% drop in latency), operating system predictability, and context switching.
• Managed major Cisco and Juniper / Arista upgrades (affecting hardware, operations, security, connectivity).
• Drove design-buildout meeting need for trader sites close to exchanges.
• Played key role in backoffice operations; earned Eurex certification required for German exchange trading.

Senior Network & Systems Engineer

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Performance Tuning - Redundant Network Buildouts - CEO Collaboration - Staffing & Hiring - Growth Strategy
• Software Licensing - Trading Software Vendor Relations - Improved Response Time - Network Team Management
• Oversaw 30,000-sq-ft electronic trading floor buildout , conferring with architects, engineers, and stakeholders, while contributing input to strategic plan. Initiated effort to move company into co-location space.
• Developed and presented business case for fully redundant technical environments, server room, cutting-edge network, and other IT advantages crucial to fast growth - while controlling costs.