What’s your background? What did you study?
I graduated with a Bachelor of Computer Science from University of New South Wales.
What sparked your interest in working for a trading firm over a technology firm?
Generally speaking, the feedback loops are much faster here and there is more flexibility when deciding which projects to work on. I applied to various tech firms for graduate roles. During the interview processes, I asked them what impact I could make as well as what the software development cycle will be like. According to what they said, it may take weeks, even months to deploy and rollout a new feature, since features may require multiple rounds of feedback and tweaks. In comparison, efficiency and speed have much more significance at a trading firm. Once we understand the requirements from the traders or other stakeholders, we design and deploy the features into a pilot environment and get feedback from them.
Tell us about your experience in the Graduate Software Developer Program?
On the graduate program you immediately work on a project that provides value to the business. This means from very early on you get to see the impact of your work. My project was to create a chat bot that would respond to urgent alerts by posting them to the relevant user group.
I have been assigned a senior software developer as my mentor who supports me around the goals I want to achieve in my career. They also guide me through internal systems and my day-to-day tasks and projects. In addition, all the team members are friendly and willing to answer my questions. What’s more, there are technical talks to introduce each team’s high-level software architecture.
Tell us about a typical day for you?
I normally arrive in the office around 8:30 a.m., and I will check emails to ensure I keep an eye on the urgent events and the schedule I am going to work on for today. This may include any feedback on recent pilot releases. As we run a highly iterative development lifecycle there are often tight loops of user feedback and changes.
Then, I will grab breakfast in the kitchen. SIG provides a variety of breakfast, including yogurt/fruit salads, and more. Since morning is the most efficient time for me, I will normally spend most of the morning writing code/debugging/testing. I will prioritise the tasks that need to be tested when the market is open.
Around 12:30 p.m., I will have lunch with my colleagues and then go for a short walk near the Barangaroo Reserve. In the afternoon, I will continue debugging/testing. We also do daily checks of our systems to make sure everything is performing as expected and I set off for home around 5:20 p.m..
How would you describe the growth you’ve seen in your time at SIG?
My growth here is steady and fast. I started from working on a small project and I’m gradually getting more familiar with the whole development cycle. Now I am responsible for a larger-scale project and am more involved in the system design. I am improving on talking to multiple stakeholders to understand their requirements. I am also taking care of applications in production, so I am beginning to understand use cases that I have never thought about before which happen in production.
What do you like best about working at SIG?
Definitely the working culture! Everyone here is super friendly and super willing to help. There is not too much hierarchy here and people are easy to reach out to. I have found the people at SIG really friendly and willing to listen to my questions patiently. There is also more exposure to the whole internal system, compared to my internship experience with another firm, and I can get more mentorship from people around me. Also, we attach a lot of significance to work life balance here at SIG.
What projects and experiences have been most rewarding so far?
I was given a project which I was working on with support from my mentor. The application was firstly used by only a small range of users within our team. After several iterations and discussing with other teams, the application is now used across different teams. The most rewarding experience from it was the ability to carry out the project independently. Starting from proof of concepts and collecting feedback from the stakeholders. Then, fully implement the applications meeting the users’ requirements and collecting feedback again.
What three pieces of advice would you give to a graduate interviewing at SIG?
My most important piece of advice is to be yourself. Showing who you really are in the interview is crucial, as the interviewers are your future teammates Second, polish your technical skills. When interviewing for a graduate software engineer role, it is important to show solid understanding of technical knowledge and system design skills. Last, show enthusiasm and interest in the company as well as trading by asking some insightful questions.