James Harris

James Harris   Kenley, SURREY CR8 5GJ--Summary Accomplished Product Owner and Business Analyst with extensive experience in financial services, specialising in equity and fixed income settlements. Proven track record in leading high-impact projects, including the design and implementation of complex systems such as GRIPS, SWIFT interfaces, and corporate actions platforms. Adept at stakeholder management, solution architecture, and agile methodologies. Proficient in C# .Net, VB .Net, SQL Server, Sybase SQL, and various other technologies. Demonstrated expertise in public cloud architecture and containerised deployment SaaS on AWS. Career goal: to leverage technical skills and industry knowledge to drive innovation in financial technology solutions. Experience Product Owner, 12/2020 - 08/2024 Broadridge - London Worked with the implementations team defining requirements for ASTRID asset servicing corporate actions platforms on multiple clients and multiple workstreams Analysis and solution architecture for the CREST corporate actions functionality Equity and Fixed Income positions, cash trades and stock loans/repos Analysis for Fixed Income processing into Impact Integration to BookKeeping, BPS, TLE and ACATs Design of high volume notifications system Lead analyst for creating scenarios for demo setup Training Dev and QA on business processing Experience with public cloud architecture, containerized deployment SaaS, AWS Sprint Planning, burndown charts, SBEs go-live planning, UAT and regression test execution Developed detailed user stories and acceptance criteria to guide development efforts. Collaborated with stakeholders to gather and prioritise product requirements for roadmap development. Product Owner / Business Analyst, 02/2020 - 11/2020 Kynetix - London Worked with the implementations team defining requirements for trades and positions reconciliations for commodities, precious metals, futures and options flow for multiple clients Analysis for FX and FX Option trade reconciliation Analysis for LME Averaging Sprint Planning, burndown charts, go-live planning, UAT and regression test execution Architectural design of the recs system Gloss Business Analyst, 12/2016 - 01/2020 Broadridge - London Working within the project team on the Global rollout of the Gloss and APTP platform for streamlining the back office settlement for Barclays Fixed Income and Equity settlements Headed up the SWIFT testing team for APTP streamlining the testing process and automating the SWIFT comparison between legacy and the Gloss platform automating the reconciliation of thousands of trades into a seamless automated process – both cash trades and stock loans/repos Gloss platform analysis and defect investigations CREST fails analysis CSDR requirements analysis for Broadridge Gloss and Barclays Jasper Reporting Analysis and project management Analysis of flows from legacy settlement and middle office platforms T2S requirements gathering and other SWIFT market requirements gathering Project Manager / Business Analyst, 12/2014 - 12/2016 Tullett Prebon - London Working within the Post Trade Application Support team responsible for Front Office deal management platforms and back-office settlement for both matched principal and name give-up business covering many products including cash equities, FX, commodities, Repo, Swaps using Agile methodologies Fidessa to RIMS integration project analysis, project management and involved in user acceptance testing Business analysis and project management on the integration of back office and middle office with Omgeo Alert and CTM Full lifecycle for implementation of third party reconciliation tool called Duco Cube from vendor selection through to software rollout MIFID II equity analysis Management of MIS projects – global MIS data warehouse consolidation project Teo upgrade involving liaising with third party vendors Drive upgrade involving liaising with third party vendors Senior Developer/Team leader, 07/2014 - 12/2014 ISB - Reigate Development and analysis for a web application for scheduling/controlling business processes written in VB.Net, JavaScript, JSON, jQuery and Mustache Decoding older apps written in Classic ASP Design and analysis for creating a modern Web Application in VB.Net, CSS3 and HTML5 Product Owner / Project Manager / Subject Matter Expert for Equity and Fixed Income Settlement, 11/2011 - 06/2014 MF Global UK Limited - London My primary role since MF Global UK Ltd entered special administration was to assist the KPMG Administration team in the orderly wind-down of the company Key responsibilities included: Managing the wind down/decommissioning of MFG's settlement system (Grips) Fielding queries and ongoing support/development of MFG's settlement system (Grips) Design and build of a data warehouse repository for use by the compliance, forensic and legal teams when responding to queries from regulators and other governing authorities Phase 1 was covering cash equity, cash bonds, repo, stock loan, collateral trades from Grips /Martini/Fidessa Phase 2 was covering derivative products from PATS and TT (Trading Technologies) Lead developer on KPMG's claims management, proposals and payment system linking to the FSCS written in C# MVC with SSIS and SSRS elements Technical Design and implementation of the SWIFT interface to support cash messaging for DMR payments MT103, MT 202 and also support for MT199 and MT999 Product Owner / EBOS Manager, 07/2008 - 11/2011 MF Global - London Team led the Equity Back Office Systems team which consisted of up to 15 people, and was also Subject Matter Expert for Equity and Fixed Income settlement System Design and implementation for a robust Transaction reporting solution merging data from multiple Front Office Systems and the Back Office Systems for MIFID Ongoing BAU and team management, liaising with Stakeholders over priorities and work schedules including COO of Europe, heads of FI desks, Compliance and Finance Ongoing mentoring of junior developers teaching business and development techniques Sybase performance tuning Design and implementation of the SWIFT interface to support MT515 functionality for ECTMS and for Japanese business Key resource on the implementation of the Asia Pac equity and fixed income settlement system in the following Asia Pac markets – Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Japan including processing with CHESS and JASDEC Trained offshore L1 and L2 support team in the day to day support of the Back Office System and continued liaison with the offshore support team L3 system support for Grips and other systems Product Owner, 11/2002 - 07/2008 Man Financial - London Team led the Grips team looking after support, BAU and ongoing projects in the Grips system The major large scale project in this period was to interface all trading platforms together using J2EE and Sybase stored procedures so a single trading platform can be used (Martini/APEX) and a single settlement system (Grips) Prior to that I led a team of developers designing and implementing netting functionality in Grips for the LCH, Euronext, MTF's (Chi-x, BATS and Turquoise) and other bespoke netting Design and implementation of the SWIFT interface to support SWIFT stock messaging including MT540 -548, MT536 processing for Germany and MT578 Allegement messages Involved in the rollout of the Martini APEX Stock Lending Front Office trading Platform including interfacing to the Back Office system Design and implementation of CREST cash and stock postings and balances reconciliation between the settlement system and CREST Management of the implementation of a third party corporate actions product called Mondas Support and maintenance of Mondas Corporate Actions system and Intellimatch reconciliation system Design and implementation of CREST automatic corporate actions functionality to automate all corporate action and dividend functionality within the settlement system Design and implementation of Central Counterparty netting for LCH, Euronext, MTF's (Chi-x, BATS and Turquoise) and other bespoke netting in Grips Design and implementation of Bulking for repos, fees and rebates, Brokertec business Design and implementation of extra trade types in Grips for repos, cash trades, rolling DBV, Equity SWAPs Analysis of cash and stock reconciliation functionality for reconciling Grips to CREST and SWIFT and Martini APEX Design and implementation of the CREST reconciliation processes and of a rules based accounting suite Architectural software design for high volume performance Business Analyst / Programmer, 12/2001 - 11/2002 GNI - London Worked with GNI main back office system (Grips) enhancing, maintaining and interfacing it to a number of other products, Fidessa, Mondas and Intellimatch Main tasks have been: Interfaces to Mondas and Intellimatch Developed the ISO15022 SWIFT application for all SWIFT messaging using .net and XSLT Analysis of requirement for custody business on Grips Management of the implementation of a third party reconciliation engine Intellimatch Analyst / Programmer, 08/1998 - 12/2001 Double Helix Software and Services - London At Double Helix, I continuously worked on the GRIPS product - a system concerned with buying and selling and stock lending of equities I was part of the team using the latest client/server technology and was involved in the business level and systems design of the project and was called upon to lead development and support teams This involved close liaisons with the business Grips was then implemented and further developed at the bank GNI My main tasks included: Design and implementation for a CREST two-way interface for settlement of UK trades – buy/sells, stock lending including returns and revaluation and also DBV transactions Production support team leader Detailed design specification and implementation for the extension of GRIPS to encompass international stock lending and borrowing including collateral management and full limits functionality, rebate, cash pool and non-cash style transactions Design and implementation for corporate actions and dividend functionality Design and implementation for CFD (Contract for Difference) functionality Performance tuning to enable Grips to cope with increasing trade volumes more easily, including major Sybase redevelopment changing row based logical to set based Analysis of cash and stock reconciliation functionality for reconciling Grips to CREST and SWIFT Analysis of requirements for multiple legal entity/ CREST participant ID functionality Analyst / Programmer, 10/1997 - 08/1998 Anite Systems - London At Anite I worked on the OMAR product - a front office system concerned with the order entry and routing functions I was part of the team using the latest client/server technology and was involved in the business level and systems design of the project This involved close liaisons with the business analyst team My main tasks included: The development of several calculation engines for order attribution and deal allocation for block orders (single security / multi portfolio) orders Detailed design specification and implementation for the extension of OMAR to encompass different security types including futures, options and bonds Detailed design specification and implementation for switch orders including stock switches, interfund transfers, rollovers and spreads Design and implementation for EURO compliance Learning and understanding many order management functions including routing to external interfaces such as settlement systems Skills Key Technical Skills: Proficient in C# .Net, VB .Net, OOD, C, SSIS, SSRS, Delphi 4,5 and 7 Good working knowledge of MVC C++ (VC++ 5.0, VC++ 4.0 and Borland C++) HTML, Perl, JavaScript, jQuery and web page design SQL Server 2008, Sybase SQL 11.9.2,12.5 and 15, Informix OOA/OOP RAD, Entity Relationship Database Modelling, CORBA, COM, .NET, JSON, FIX, API Gloss, RIMS, Martini APEX, Fidessa Etp and Enterprise, Omgeo Alert and Oaysis / CTM, Duco Cube Mondas, Intellimatch, CREST, SWIFT, MFC, Tools.h++, Client / Server technology, three tier technology, CORBA, Report Smith, TFS, Starteam, Visual Source Safe, Microsoft Office Products (Word, Excel and Access), Microsoft Project, Planview Jira, Confluence, GIT Data Dictionaries Accomplishments Cash Equity, Fixed Income, FX, ETDs, Commodities, SWAPS, Triparty flows, Repo, DBV and Stock Borrow and Loan Products Asset Servicing - Corporate Actions and Dividends processing Exchange, CCP, Netting and Settlement processing Instrument Reference Data, counterparty static data and SSIs Credit risk management experience Safe Custody SWIFT SEME MIFID and MIFID II experience AML and KYC experience Gloss and RIMS experience Omgeo Alert and Omgeo Oaysis / CTM Fidessa Etp and Enterprise - high and low touch trading, algo trading Rules based accounting functionality for back office accounting ledger Experienced in third party vendor management for a Corporate Actions implementation (MONDAS) and reconciliation systems (Intellimatch and Duco) and Martini APEX stock lending system Good Understanding of Repo/BSB/Collateral Pledges/Borrowing vs Cash and Inter Life actions Vast experience with Crest, Swift and Euroclear messaging designing an interface with a 99 % STP rate Experienced at CREST testing both with CREST Trailing and also using Safe Financials CREST Simulator Analytical Skills, documenting and presenting Business Requirements, Functional Specifications and product design ensuring maximum STP Target Operating Model definition and As-Is and To-Be Analysis Analysis and preparation for the introduction of new products/markets including Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, Israel, Self-Clearing for UK, Germany, Switzerland and Euronext markets Experienced in requirements analysis for MiFid and transaction reporting Collateral Management functionality including cash pools, fee marking, fees and rebates and global rerate Implementation of a settlement system in the Asia PAC region Stakeholder Management reporting up to CEO, CTO and CIO level Solution Architecture for a high volume ASSET servicing platform and settlement system Change Management in a SOX environment Release management of new patches and releases for deployment into QA, UAT and Production environments Experience in Agile methods - User Stories, Spec by Example etc ITIL Foundation Certified Certified Agile DSDM Atern Foundation and Practitioner Experience of implementing systems using Azure technologies Architectural design of high volume enterprise systems Data Analytics with Excel and SQL Education 1997 Birkbeck College, University of London MSc Computing Science 1995 University of Bath BEng Chemical and Bio Process Engineering 1991 Sevenoaks School - Sevenoaks Chemistry A, Biology A, French A, Maths B, Latin B, Computer Studies B, English Lit. C, English Lang. C, Geography C, Physics C, Chemistry A, Maths B, Latin C References References: References available on request Interests Hobbies and Interests: , During my free time I enjoy spending time with my family. My favourite sport is skiing, and I am a keen swimmer. I have travelled widely, I enjoy reading a wide range of literature including science fiction, thrillers and historical books. I enjoy listening to music and I play the electric guitar.