Spotlight: Charles River’s Engineering Team
Charles River Development continually invests in new products, services and technology to address market and client demands. Meet members of our Engineering Team – Domingo Gonzalez (DG), Vice President; and Terry Murtaugh (TM), Director – who develop new and improved functionality for the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS).
What is your role at Charles River and how do you add value for our clients?
(DG) I’m responsible for setting Charles River’s technology direction, as well as the architecture, development and delivery of our software products. The entire team is focused on helping clients support their investment business with a flexible and easy-to-use buy-side investment management solution that helps our clients do their jobs as efficiently as possible.
(TM) My team handles the trade and analytic calculations for all fixed income instruments. They are responsible for the core development work in Charles River IMS that supports OTC derivatives, including: interest rate swaps; credit default swaps; swaptions; credit linked notes; etc. Over the years, our support for these instruments has evolved – from simple trade capture, to analytics such as fair values and durations, to interfaces with industry standard post-trade venues, to order generation and what-if analysis support in the Manager Workbench.
My team, which is actually called ‘Straight Through Processing’ (STP), also handles data interfaces between Charles River IMS and external systems for accounting, post-trade, crossing, and batch for all instrument classes, with a current focus on derivatives. These interfaces give our customers direct, seamless access to a variety of products and services so that STP is a reality, not a buzzword.
What types of issues does your team address most often? Do you see any trends on the horizon?
(DG) Most of today’s issues require capabilities for faster processing of very large volumes of data, as well as better use of emerging technologies, such as virtualization, rich internet applications (RIA), and visualization techniques. We’re helping clients do more things better and faster by displaying data in easier, more intuitive ways, adding support for new instruments, new interfaces, and more advanced and flexible analytic calculations.
(TM) There’s been a lot of discussion about the role of OTC derivatives trading in the current economic situation. This is leading towards more standardization, centralized clearing and regulation of these instruments. Some of these changes have already surfaced, including new trading and settlement rules in North America for credit default swaps – labeled the “Big Bang” – that are now spreading to the European market. Our goal is to anticipate, rather than simply respond, to these types of changes. As a result, we worked proactively with a number of clients to see how they planned to handle the “Big Bang,” both in general and in their use of Charles River IMS. Given our product’s built-in flexibility, we did not need to issue any special patches – allowing clients to handle “Big Bang” requirements quickly and easily.
Given these trends, what is your vision for enhancing your team’s ability to meet market and client demands?
(DG) Research and development is a primary focus at Charles River. We’re constantly looking out for emerging technologies, listening to clients and partnering with major technology providers. Identifying the best achievable solution for clients requires teamwork and collaboration. For example, an expanded feature may involve core work by the frameworks team, additional blotter functionality or analytic calculations, as well as a new data provider interface. We learn from each other, and work closely to evaluate and assess how best to adapt our products and services to meet clients’ evolving needs.
(TM) One of the first things we do is hire skillful, well-rounded developers who really enjoy financial applications. Many of our team members are taking finance courses or studying to earn their Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designations. On the purely technical side, we continually try to develop general solutions, so that when requirements change and expand, we’re ready.
What is your professional background and how has it supported your current role?
(DG) I have a degree in Computer Science, and have spent 18 years building enterprise software systems and providing software solutions for complex problems facing the financial industry. I joined Charles River in 2003. Before taking on my current role, I was a Director for Charles River’s Portfolio Management products.
(TM) I’ve spent my entire 35- year career supporting financial services firms. While my educational background was in science, I loved programming more. My first job was with a small firm which managed investments in commodity futures, government bonds, and foreign exchange. I then worked for several software and data companies serving financial industry clients before joining Charles River in 1997.
All of these experiences have given me a pretty decent background in the variety of investments available, exposure to the different investment management roles and functions, and a good understanding of the requirements our clients need from a solution like Charles River IMS.
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