Data Engineer

Meet a Data Engineer

Why did you choose to join SIG?

At Penn, I was involved with the Advancing Women in Engineering (AWE) program. We worked closely with the national Society of Women Engineers to get more women interested in engineering and computer science. After graduation, I continued to work with AWE. Since SIG’s Head of Technology is a woman, I actually invited her to speak at an event for the organization. I had only been here for six months at the time, so I thought it was really cool that I could ask her to do that.

What does your team work on at SIG?

The Data Engineering team is responsible for making sure the platforms we support can deliver vital information to traders and quants. It's data that the traders use directly to make trading decisions. We supply the datasets they run their algorithms against and data tools for them to make decisions on the fly. I like that I get to work with a variety of technical groups as well, like security, systems engineering, and market data, as well as directly with the traders.

What does a day look like for you?

Each morning, I monitor all the overnight processes to see their progression. When I get into the office, I determine the most critical issues. To address them I talk to the quants about where the data is or what the issues are, or I escalate to developers. If it’s minor code issues, I’ll do it, but if it’s recompiling code, I’ll work with some of our developers.

Since I work with quants and traders, I meet with them frequently to prioritize our work. I may be in one of our weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings, which include members of our Quant team, as well as some of our trading desk heads and our CIO. At least once a day, I have a meeting with one of my direct reports as well. Afterwards, it’s lots of project planning and update meetings.

What is your advice to younger women looking to start a career in technology?

Don’t be intimidated. I think that’s what’s made me successful, I tried not to be intimidated. If I felt like I was being pushed aside, I stepped up and made myself known.