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BlackRock's Dan Veiner (left) said the firm is looking for employees to have both development and investment skills
- BlackRock, which manages more than $2 trillion in fixed income, is looking for a new kind of trader, the firm's head of fixed income said at a conference.
- Dan Veiner wants to hire both people with deep experience in fixed income, who can help the firm respond when money in the market dries up, and staff with one foot in fixed income and the other in technology.
- The latter group uses Python and other skill sets to do "citizen development," working on projects that can scale without professional developers.
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The next generation of fixed income experts will know as much about programming language Python as they do about corporate-grade bonds, a BlackRock executive said.
Dan Veiner, the firm's head of fixed income trading, highlighted how BlackRock's expectations of technology expertise is evolving at Wednesday's Fixed Income Leaders Summit in Philadelphia. The firm - which manages $2 trillion in fixed income - previously thought of tech savviness as a willingness to innovate and use electronic trading platforms.
Now that about a quarter of US corporate bond trading happens electronically, using these trading platforms is a basic expectation. That's led BlackRock to look for staff that can do "citizen development," Veiner said. While the firm has a cadre of professional developers working on its fast-growing Aladdin business, the "citizen development sandbox" allows people with Python skills to "build patchwork solutions that are electronic and scalable in the interim," Veiner said.
"Python and all these things are important, but also a love for the markets [are important] so they can develop those skills. We really need both of those," he said. "It's absolutely a tough combination, and you're vulnerable to those people being poached. I know I'm doing a good job when I see people come into my office and say 'I got an offer.'"
Veiner said finding staff that can look at the business big picture and have high emotional intelligence is more difficult than hiring data-focused PhDs.
Not all of his searches are high-tech. He said he's also looking for fixed income traders with deep market experience.
"We need people that understand the markets and can step in and provide liquidity," he said. "The one thing that we've definitely noticed with the electronification of markets is liquidity can taper off [quickly] ... It's extremely important to have people who really know that space and are an integral part of the investment process."
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