Bloomberg in Frankfurt: “The perfect place for an Engineering department”

I discovered what I wanted to do when my high school got funding to install a new information communication technology (IT in the U.S. and ICT in Europe) system for its classrooms. After the principal’s son and I helped set it up, I was hooked! Following graduation, I decided to pursue an apprenticeship degree program, which is an alternative to a traditional university education.

Starting in 2000, I learned IT skills on-site at RTS Realtime Systems, which was a global provider of low-latency connectivity and trading support services. I worked for the company as it grew from 80 to 200 people, and I had the opportunity to learn new skills and move into customer support, which really fulfilled my interest in listening to people and understanding what they are trying to achieve, rather than just fixing the issues at hand. Eventually, I was promoted to Managing Director for Europe, and I oversaw operations and managed customer relationships.

It wasn’t until 2012 that the CEO asked me to move into an engineering role as Head of Product Development. At first, I didn’t think I had the skill set, so I brushed up on my engineering skills and gave it a try. It worked out so well that I retained that position two years later, after Bloomberg’s acquisition.

Frankfurt is the largest financial center in continental Europe, and it’s the perfect place for a Bloomberg Engineering department. 

I fill two roles at the moment: managing the global Trading Connectivity team and leading Frankfurt Engineering. Trading Connectivity handles all of our real-time transactional connections to venues and brokers around the world, as well as our indication of interest (IOI) system. We apply a standardized approach to connecting transactions from Bloomberg’s trading systems to a diverse set of external vendors like global brokers, banks, clearing houses, venues and exchanges.

Our team in Frankfurt has a global remit. We work with all venues worldwide, on key parts of Bloomberg’s core business that affects our clients around the world. We’re also embedded in the local tech community, which broadens our perspective as a department and contributes to idea sharing.

We also execute on four strategic pillars: recruiting, communities, training, and D&I. Each pillar has a champion that collaborates with our global partners in each of those departments. 

It has led to new recruiting relationships with universities, global virtual engineering events to showcase our work, region-wide training programs (which include our engineering  colleagues in Tel Aviv, Prague, and Lugano), and much more. But what’s important to know is that we truly make an effort to be inclusive within our region and visible to a global audience. It’s all a really collaborative effort.

I’ve never worked on an all-German team; we’ve always had colleagues from all parts of the world, who represent many different cultures. Today is no different. My office includes people from many European and Asian countries, as well as the U.S. and Nigeria. And my Trading Connectivity team counts members who work in a distributed fashion from Frankfurt, New York, Pune, and Hong Kong.

I aim to create an inclusive environment by asking people about their different backgrounds, outlooks, motivations, and approaches. I need team members to feel comfortable thinking differently and questioning assumptions, which is why it’s important to bring different educational, ethnic, and cultural experiences to our design discussions. Specifically, we ensure everybody on the team is being heard, regardless of their gender, background, or experience level. We identify people who seem less outgoing and prompt them about their motivations and ideas so we can encourage engagement and confident idea-sharing.

We collaborate so much more now than 20 years ago. We used to use a “waterfall model,” where Engineering was told what to build, and we built it to specifications without context about business goals. Now, we have a much more collaborative Agile model, where we work closely with Product Managers and, sometimes, even Sales reps and clients to understand their goals and needs.

Engineers are included in initial discussions about the intention of functionality and new products. This helps our team get a holistic understanding about what clients want to achieve. Through this process, the people who know the system best are able to give valuable input in the design. Also, instead of building the entire solution before clients get to see it, we build an initial version and ask clients for feedback. During that phase of the development, we are still able to make adjustments. We can also ask questions of each other and challenge conventional thinking.

In addition, engineers spend time bulletproofing our products before they are released to customers. This makes our customers happy and means we spend less time troubleshooting.

There’s also been a comprehensive shift toward automation across every aspect of our work. By eliminating as many of the manual processes as we can, we’ve made huge gains in efficiency and streamlined collaboration among our teams.

Of course, we’re also the beneficiaries of incredible technological advancements in the tools that monitor the health of our products and infrastructure. Twenty years ago, we would have to wait for a customer to alert us to any system issues. Today, we receive alerts when customers reach a threshold where they might start to experience an issue. This way, we can proactively resolve potential problems before the customer ever experiences any impact on their operations.