Data integration challenges creating job opportunities for techies
As financial services firms battle regulatory requirements around transparency and the need to react to new business opportunities, more integrated data management solutions are being pushed to the fore.
The role of technologists with expertise in this area is therefore becoming more prominent within the business, more complex and - importantly - more in demand.
Speakers at the recent Sungard City Day, pointed to how financial services firms were investing more into data management solutions in a bid to assess risk exposures in real-time and react quickly to any business opportunities.
The need for greater integration of data systems was also highlighted by speakers at the European Financial Information Conference this week.
Clearly, it's a hot topic, and this is beginning to be reflected in recruitment needs.
"There's been a push to create better management of the various data streams within financial services organisations," agrees Andrew Keene, director of IT in finance recruiters Thomson Keene. "Firms want to gain access to cross-product information, as well as looking at efficiency gains. Data management roles are no longer viewed as simply a back office technology position - they're being more closely aligned to business requirements."
Increasingly, it's no longer sufficient to be an expert in either market data, front office trade data or reference data, but rather a have a knowledge of all three and how these can service various areas of the business.
The result is that salaries are being slowly edged up, suggests Keene. Head of data management roles can pay anything between 100-150k base at director and executive director level.
While a lot of strategic, senior recruitment took place in the first half of the year, this has begun to filter down the ranks in recent months, suggests Adam Pizzie, manager - IT at Robert Walters.
"Both banks and asset management firms are recruiting business intelligence development staff with a bias towards ETL technologies," he says. "This is mainly for internal data migration projects with key skill demands being ETL (such as Informatica/Ab Initio) and data warehousing, but there is also a need for front end reporting solutions using Cognos or Business Objects."
