Rupert Dudley

Algo Trading Quant Development Manager, Managing Director (2021 - present)

• Following the successful reimplementation of the eFX Platform, my responsibilities increased to include the FX options quant development team.
• I was also asked to establish regionally aligned Equity Derivatives quant development teams, who are leveraging our core framework and tooling to implement bespoke platforms that meet regional requirements, whilst ensuring that common strategic components can be used across all regions.
• My total team size grew to around 50 - 55 quant developers, with additional leadership responsibility spanning across aligned technology teams.
• Across FX options and Equity Derivatives, we partnered with quant teams to integrate derivatives pricing and volatility libraries into algo pricing and quoting pipelines, meeting the non-functional requirements that the businesses required, and leading to increased revenue and dramatically reduced slippage.
• We delivered optimised workflow tooling to Equity Derivatives flow sales and trading teams, reducing operational risk and improving efficiency and revenue. This required a blend of pragmatic changes that were delivered carefully to align with a broader strategic platform vision.
• A significant part of this role requires close partnership with product and trading, to prioritise within and across regions, and to protect quant development leads by bring a level of realism as to how much can be tackled in parallel, and what can be achieved.
• Follwing the Credit Suisse takeover, I led the initial engamagement with the CS eMacro team, forming the initial high-level plans which led to the successful integration of the two eFX platforms, whilst continuing to service clients across both businesses as the CS stack was decommissioned.
• I led the integration of the CS eMacro team into the UBS quant development team. Given the nature of the takeover, and the differences in team respnsibilities and culture, as well as the potential key person risk associated with elevated attrition, this was a significant managerial challenge.
• Following the decision to adopt the quant development framework across the broader tech organisation, our quant development teams supported aligned technology teams through documentation, training sessions and buddying.
• I work closely with IB technology risk management understand EOL and vulnerability timelines. I always keen to understand the rationalle behind each EOL decision and risk severity rating, so that I can challenge where appropriate, and prioritise holistically across the entire book of work, against other mandatory and risk reducing initiatives.

eFX Quant Development Manager, Executive Director (2017 - 2021)

• Following a reorganisation, I was appointed as the quant development manager for eFX.
• My responsibilities increased to include the algo and model framework, algo and model implementation, client pricing and distribution, market connectivity, devops and engineering.
• My total team size grew to around 25 - 30 quant developers, including an engineering / devops team, responsible for an eTrading platform with an on-prem footprint of hundreds of servers deployed in colo across all key regions
• I organised my eFX aligned developers into four pods, each with specific responsibilities for the design, delivery and support of strategic components, to be delivered according to the agreed approach.
• My team and I established the strategic low latency algo trading framework that underpins the entire eTrading platform from market tick in, to client quote out. The framework provides the patterns, utilities and transports that are required to build a performant and resilient solution, that can be continuously released.
• I successfully challenged the standard release process, justifying the business need along with the demonstratable reduction in risk through releasing small changes often, throughout the business day, when our SMEs were present.
• Our team delivered bespoke process management tools that were required to support this continuous intra-day delivery model, whilst still fully adhering to the tech SDLC and all associated mandatory controls.
• As a result, our quant development team consistently stands out as one of the most productive development teams within the IB, with high numbers of release achieved along with very low numbers of rollbacks and incidents.
• The engineering team was responsible for delivering the CI/CD pipeline and tooling that facilitated our continuous delivery model, whilst also owning our tick database solution and our cloud-based data analytics platform, our hardware acquisition process, and our low latency network management
• I partnered with control functions and second line of defence functions to establish the frameworks and approaches that are used for model validation and limit management.
• I dedicated a huge amount of time towards technical leadership, expectation and objective setting, performance management, and growing future leaders within the team
• The strategic implementation of eFX led to improved non-functional performance, scalability, resiliency and client experience, evidenced by expand rankings and Euromoney awards.

eFX Quant Development Team Lead, Director (2015 - 2017)

• Following a gradual degradation in the performance of the FX, Rates and Credit eTrading businesses, UBS committed to hiring senior developers into the front office, with a mandate to rebuild the eTrading platforms
• I was appointed to lead a team of 5 senior quant developers, who were initially tasked with rebuilding eFX components spanning market connectivity, position management and data persistence, that met and exceeded ultra low latency requirements.
• Our team successfully replaced proposed market connectivity vendor technology with a simpler in-house alternative that achieved comparable performance.
• We stabilised the front office position manager through a pragmatic redesign of the transport layer, UMS and EMS, to ensure speed and guaranteed delivery.
• Towards the end of the first year, it became clear that there was an organisational disjoint between our trading, quant and quant development teams. I raised this to senior management, which resulted in a reorganisation which cleanly aligned all three functions to the same management chain and the same organisational goals

Quant Developer / Trader

• Following an extended period of sick leave from January to September 2014, I returned to work as a quant developer, sitting on desk with quants and trading.
• I partnered with quants to build strategic risk signals and advanced execution strategies.
• I quickly prototyped and built on-desk mark to market and PnL evaluation toold, for use by quants and trading.
• My responsibilities included eFX book management and manual intervention where required.

Dev Manager

• I was appointed as the eFX development manager, leading a team of 8 - 10 developers.
• I led the expansion of the platform and its capabilities as the franchise grew.
• I established an Agile delivery approach, and the associated tooling that was required to enable this delivery model.
• I led the team through multiple audits of software and delivery approach, always achieving positive results, and setting the standard for Agile delivery within the corporation.

eFX Developer

• I initially joined as the most junior of a team of three developers, who were tasked with delivering a new market making capability that was underpinned by existing connectivity and transport frameworks.
• I designed and implemented strategic concepts and patterns atop the strategic framework that enabled rapid development of the platform.
• I personally delivered key components across market connectivity, pricing, client distribution and execution.
• I led the initial successful go live of the platform, achieving the initial goals of releasing a minimum viable project in circa three months, and a fully functional platform within 9 - 12 months.

• Our team was initially hired to rebuild the eFX position management component.
• My responsibilities grew when I became team lead for a hybrid team, spanning multiple locations, and including a mix of permanent and consultancy staff. The team were responsible for delivering strategic components for the new FX Single Dealer Platform.
• My key development achievements included building the first 29West-backed transport library and delivering the initial version of a Hazelcast-backed data fabric for storing and distributing reference data and client relationship hierarchies.

• I was initially partnered with quants and traders to rebuild the eFX spot pricing engine and associated UI.
• I worked closely with members of the quant team to design, implement, test and then optimise the new pricing model.
• My scope increased to deliver requirements across the eTrading platform, including client and exchange connectivity, client pricing and performance enhancements.

• I joined the Group Technology graduate scheme, initially assigned to an L1/L2 support team within the retail division.
• Following 9 - 12 months in support, I secured a move to the associated development team, gaining experience as a Java/J2EE developer aligned to a document workflow platform.