Banks want technologists within fixed income too

It's no secret that fixed income has been very kind to investment banking revenues in the first half of 2009, and that the majority of large firms are looking to recruit for sales and trading. However, they're also attempting to gain an edge through investing in IT in this sector, which is creating a raft of roles for highly-skilled technologists.

Headhunters tell us that Barclays Capital, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS are all looking to recruit developers to build fixed income trading platforms, as these divisions are key to driving up revenues this year.

James Richmond, sales director at financial IT recruiters Cititec, says: "We've seen an influx of requirements for technologists in the fixed income space. In some cases banks are taking third-party systems, but the majority are now building their own and there's a lot of investment in greenfield projects."

While the technical skills required to build these systems are around Java and C#, recruiters suggest banks are looking for a different type of developer from those they would employ for, say, cash equities or FX.

"It's not about systems dealing with a greater frequency of trades, because the products in fixed income tend to be more complex," says Oliver Hinchliffe, manager of the technology division at Project Partners. "Candidates need a strong mathematical background as well as deep technical abilities. Clients are predicting growth in this area in the second half of the year."

The result, suggests Richmond, is that banks are looking to attract developers from other industries, in particular academia.

They're also willing to pay. Hinchliffe says high level developers are being offered up to 110k base salaries for roles within fixed income IT.