Trumid Leadership & Management

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s your professional background, and why were you brought on to lead this team? 

As a seasoned trader, quantitative analyst and software designer, my journey in the capital markets has been driven by a relentless pursuit of precision and efficiency, leveraging technology to achieve even greater success. My passion for automation and tech-driven innovation has led me to fixed income trading, a market which until recently has largely resisted the automation trends that have transformed trading in other asset classes. Fixed income has traditionally been dominated by voice-based execution with individuals negotiating trades over the phone. 

The tide began to change post the Global Financial Crisis with the introduction of electronic trading protocols aided by dramatic advances in software tools, AI, and data science. Accumulation of proprietary data by market participants putting these tools to work is now shifting this trend into high gear.

I decided to pursue my passion for automation at Trumid, a financial technology company and fixed income electronic trading platform bringing efficiency to credit trading through data, technology, and intuitively designed products. As a fast-growing market leading innovator with an agile technology stack, Trumid is uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends. Trumid derives this position from a persistent focus on technology and most importantly an unrelenting pursuit of serving client needs, as evidenced by the rapid client adoption of Trumid trading protocols and solutions.

How would you describe your approach to leadership, and how do you plan on building team culture?

I work hard to build teams of domain experts, people who possess exceptional skills in the specific area of focus, and who enjoy exchanging ideas and cross-learning opportunities. My experience in delivering impactful automation solutions is why I have been brought in to lead Trumid’s automation engineering team. We are an experienced group of software engineers, data scientists and former traders, working together to create exceptional workflow automation solutions for our clients.

 When we set out to create new products, my job is to get the “idea ball” rolling. I leverage my cross-functional industry knowledge to communicate the client needs our product is being designed for and propose a potential technical approach to determine the solution. At this point, team collaboration takes over and enhances the proposed approach, leveraging both independent and collective thinking to maximize creativity. Finding solutions while having fun is deeply embedded in our culture at Trumid and it's a trusted environment in which all ideas are welcome and heard.

But our success as a team is a function not only of the exceptionally talented individuals but is the result of a conscious effort to continuously align our focus with client needs. We are constantly reminding ourselves of various facets of the business problem we are solving and testing our approach in its ability to deliver the optimal solution: always working closely with colleagues across technology, product, and sales.

What project/initiative are you most excited to tackle, and why? What impact does this project/initiative have on Trumid or its customers?

Traditional automation approaches in fixed income trading have often taken a narrow focus, streamlining a specific aspect of the trader workflow. Using the car driving analogy, this traditional approach to automation is akin to cruise control. The driver selects the route and remains in control of the steering. In contrast, at Trumid, we are creating a trader workflow automation solution which is analogous to a fully self-driving car. Our approach takes trader input with respect to what needs to be done, allows for sensitivities with respect to execution parameters such as price efficiency and time efficiency, and then proceeds to select the optimal route and fully executes all the steps along the way.

Continuing advances in machine learning and AI are providing enormous tailwinds to the future of automation. As our network continues to grow and is enriched by the activity that is happening here, we can develop data products and solutions that can guide traders in optimizing what, how, when and with whom to trade. We believe that AI and automation will have a positive influence on our market, facilitating the dynamic needs of an increasingly electronic market place.