A Trending Archetype in Front-Office Production Support

Since joining Saragossa, I have specialised in building and scaling production support teams within the buy-side finance space.

During my time here, I have built out a network of some of the best talent in this position as well as the senior leaders hiring them. As a result, I have established a good understanding of the key skills and characteristics that make a high performing application support engineer.

Technical Skills:

First of all, I think what really separates the best talent in this space is possessing business knowledge. Someone that understands trading as a whole is in a much better position to support not only front-office systems, but back and middle-office systems too.

A majority of our hedge fund and trading clients tend to use on-prem solutions, typically for latency reasons and primarily with a focus on Linux. Being able to work your way around a Linux terminal and scripting skills in Bash are highly desirable in the space.

Whilst we are on the topic of scripting, Python is taking over. Those who can come up with automated solutions with Python are now more in demand then ever as buy-side firms continue to speed up and streamline their processes.

Trading and data go hand in hand, and a lot of data at that. Being able to work your way around a database is crucial. The most common type we see are SQL databases, so being able to create your own SQL queries and pull data is hugely important. I am starting to see a shift though, with many firms moving towards KDB/q environments.

Essentially, the archetype I tend to see consists of trading knowledge, Linux, Python and SQL.

If you have strong skills in each of these, you could be a good fit for a role in production support.

Soft Skills:

Front-office support can be chaotic, it’s fast and the stakes are high. Technical skills are important, but soft skills are equally important.

Stress resistance is an obvious one. For a trading firm, a broken trading platform could potentially lead to huge losses. It is important that you can keep a cool head, understand problems, and provide solutions on the spot. All of this whilst under pressure and racing against the clock.

Communication is key, if an issue arises within an application, you need to be able to explain to users what has gone wrong and the steps you are taking to provide a fix. If you can’t find an immediate fix, you need to be able to ensure the escalation point can clearly understand where an issue is stemming from so that they can then take the steps to fix it.

Collaboration between IT teams is common-place, working together to improve front-office systems longer term. Collaboration between production support teams is a given, whether that be to troubleshoot a critical problem, or working together to implement a shiny new OMS.

Of course, there are plenty more skills which will make you a top candidate for a role in application support, with every firm leveraging different technologies and systems.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all role and there is no optimum build, but having strengths in these technologies will give you a solid foundation.

If you are looking for your next role in production support, or for an engineer to join your team, please reach me at adamb@saragossa.co.uk

What do you think makes a good application support engineer?