Junior Technical Support Analyst

The incoming hire will work as a dedicated technical support specialist within the Electronic Trading team and Middle Office business area at Winterflood Securities Limited. The candidate will be responsible for liaising with traders, clients, and third party vendors in a professional manner, often collaborating with the in-house IT department and development teams to troubleshoot and resolve real-time issues, as well as making contributions towards key strategic projects and other initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• 1st line technical support for multiple client-side and market-side trading platforms
• Proactive monitoring of all Electronic Trading connections and workflows
• Perform critical Start-of-day and End-of-day checks and procedures
• Assist Middle Office colleagues in providing real-time technical support to traders and clients
• Collaborate and build relationships with key third party suppliers/vendors
• Proactively identify and diagnose technical issues, taking clear remedial action if necessary
• Ensure all issues and changes are accurately logged and tracked to completion
• Participate and engage with the team to continually question the validity of key processes, functions and workflows, freely sharing knowledge, insights, best practices and ideas to ensure greater efficiencies and encourage personal development
• Review and update key procedural documentation including FIX and API specifications
• Assist in the production of key management information
• Coordinate and document connectivity conformance tests and functional certifications
• Maintaining technical contact information of all key clients and third party vendors
• Take ownership of client on-boarding and vendor take-on and implementation process
• Collaborate across the business with areas such as Compliance and Risk

Required Skills and Knowledge

• 0-3 years’ experience in a First-Line IT Support role
• IT Qualification – either at Undergraduate/Apprentice level or equivalent
• Demonstrable interest to pursue a career in Trading/Financial Services
• Quick learner, with ability to question and challenge
• Commitment to learn new skills and develop existing ones
• Ability to multi-task, sometimes under pressure
• Ability to plan and prioritize workload
• Presentable with good client facing skills and telephone manner
• Self-starter, initiative and motivated to achieve end goals
• Prepared to go the extra mile, ‘can-do’ attitude
• Professional and responsible, taking pride in work, accountable

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Technical experience working with Linux/Unix
• Any experience using FIX protocol messaging, market leading OMS/EMS vendors

Benefits

• Competitive salary inclusive of discretionary annual bonus & annual pay review
• Work Abroad Policy for up to 15 days per year
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays and additional well-being day
• Option to purchase an additional 5 days holiday per year
• Pension scheme up to 10% employer contribution
• Sharesave scheme
• Income Protection & Life insurance (4 x salary core level of cover)
• Private health care via BUPA
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Discounted Gym Membership
• Variety of travel to work schemes

At Close Brothers we look to recruit individuals from all different backgrounds and encourage you to apply even if you don’t tick every box. We celebrate diversity, promote inclusivity and are open to discuss flexible work options to help you balance your work and home life.

We appreciate that from time to time, recruitment agencies will have speculative CVs that they may wish to submit to our Talent Acquisition team in relation to a specific role.

To avoid any ambiguity around fees, please note that speculative CVs received by Close Brothers, that have not been authorised in advance, by us, will be ineligible for an agency fee. Thank you.

The Company

Winterflood Securities is a leading market maker committed to providing liquidity and flexible execution services to retail brokers, asset managers and institutional investors.

Winterflood’s strengths are a combination of traditional trading values and the performance of our own cutting edge technology. Our experienced team of traders helps clients achieve high quality execution in over 15,000 tradable instruments including UK, European and North American Equities together with Investment Trusts, Exchange Traded Products, Fixed Income, Structured Products and Funds. Founded in 1988, Winterflood has gone from being a niche market maker in the UK Small Cap market, to a mature, diverse and major liquidity provider across multiple asset classes in the UK and European markets.

Winterflood is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Winterflood Securities is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Close Brothers Group plc, a specialist financial services group which makes loans, takes deposits, trades securities and provides advice and investment management solutions to a wide range of clients. Close Brothers Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 250.