In this role, I had to analyse and improve business operations, provide expert guidance and training throughout the organization and implement projects.Projects I have worked on:𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦Analysing the current internal training program and suggesting recommendations to HR to increase the commitment and awareness of the new joiners𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠Analysing the current process of invoice handling. From the initial receival from suppliers, via checking against expected liabilities and automatically processing this in the accounting software.𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭Worked together with a third party so see if a specific business case in the cryptocurrency trading space would be an interesting business case. Analysis and requirements were written for a proof of concept and after that was successfully executed the requirements for a minimum viable product were made.𝐌𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞For new and existing business cases, I have analysed how Mifid II regulation impacted the way of working and did a gap analysis to see what had to be done to be within the regulatory framework.

The main responsibility was to keep the trading software running. Especially in the beginning, when the company was small, this was a very broad role. The activities ranged from racking servers, upgrading OS-es and upgrading hardware to installing monitoring software and interaction with all the different users, such as traders, risk managers and developers. We had a small support team, which I was managing. I have also been working as a certified product owner until the company changed the development process.The biggest challenge in this role was to keep the internal users happy with too little human and hardware resources. At the same time, we have reduced the dependency on third party suppliers for our core business.

As one of the founding partners of this proprietary trading company, I was mainly responsible for the technical part of the business. I was managing our servers and was responsible for keeping the software up-to-date, improving our automatic trading strategies, investigating issues and establishing good relations with third party suppliers.Especially the first two years of this startup were very challenging. Not only because we had to take care of everything ourselves, which we were not used, coming from a big organization, but also because of the difficult trading environment in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Many of our peer companies and some of our business relations had to stop their operations in this period, which had impact on us and tested our flexibility and entrepreneurship. But even after all the setbacks, we did survive, but we knew that there was no future for small companies like Caerus in an increasingly regulated environment. The compliance costs were just too high. We started looking for a solution and ended up being acquired by WEBB Traders, a similar company. This combination would lead to a lot of synergies so we could lower the costs and increase the revenues.

Van Der Moolen acquired Curvalue, so I did not really move to another employer. The situation did change as I became part of a bigger, NYSE listed, organization. In December 2006, I became one of the three team leaders that were managing the market making desk while also trading full time. I was involved in a project to completely redesign the proprietary trading software and learnt more and more about the hardware and infrastructure side of a global trading firm.Unfortunately, the company suffered from mismanagement on board level, creating dissatisfaction with me and many other employees. Together with seven colleagues, I made plans to start our own proprietary trading firm and finally resigned in August 2009 to execute these plans.

During my time as a derivatives trader, I learnt about the dynamics of the financial markets from a professional perspective. The company used a proprietary trading system, which was in constant development. I took the role upon me to talk with the software team about design of new features and was the person to do the validation of new features.