Systems skills highly sought

Expertise in finance-focused software systems is bringing increasing rewards.

A little over 12 months ago, Robert Jones was working as a systems analyst for a City investment bank. Today, he's in the same job at a different bank - earning a salary that's 10,000 higher than he was paid by his previous employer.

What made Jones so desirable to his new company was his experience of developing systems to help banks become compliant. New regulations such as MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) are rapidly driving investment in business intelligence, document management and archiving systems, and there is a real shortage of experienced staff.

Jones' own experience was in ClusterSeven, a software application that allows companies to manage, audit and analyse information in spreadsheets. "In an organisation like an investment bank, there are literally thousands of spreadsheets, and they should all be compliant and consistent," says Jones. "Banks are very aware that everything has to be compliant, not just with MiFID but also Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot Act."

If you want to work in investment banking, another product that's worth knowing about is Murex. According to Simon Walker, a director of city recruitment firm Project Partners, salaries for people with experience of the derivatives application have increased by at least 10,000 this year.

Walker says his firm has seen salaries for permanent system administrators go from 65,000 to over 75,000 over the last year, with contractor day rates also increasing from 600 to 750. "Talent is scarce because so many banks are rolling out systems, trying to get to grips with a more complex derivatives environment," he says.

The growth isn't limited to Murex - Walker says he has also seen rapid growth in demand for other derivatives systems such as OpenLink, and risk applications including Algorithmics.