Alex Ings

Name: Alex Ings
Employer: Credit Suisse
University: Imperial College London
Subject: MEng electrical and electronic engineering
Area of work: IT & technology in investment banking

I didn’t study computing at university but I enjoyed the programming aspect of my course more than anything else and decided that I wanted an IT-related job. The first step was to get an internship, so I picked out possible employers from careers magazines and applied mainly to banks – the financial rewards seemed good. I did an internship with my current employer and was offered a position, which really took the pressure off when I went back to university for my final year.

My job

I now work in the equities department of an investment bank: we provide a service to the traders and sales  traders who deal in stocks and derivatives products. Personally, I work in the team that runs the main trade-entry system.

I started out doing development and programming and fixing any bugs in the application. Since then, I’ve moved on to be in charge of a couple of areas within the application, so my work now involves managing projects and people.

The teams also provide second-line support for problems that other support teams can’t fix. It can be frustrating to be interrupted when you’ve got a lot on, but it’s satisfying to come up with good solutions. From a programming point of view, I really enjoy the challenge of my work. It’s great to get direct feedback from users and to see that the work I’ve done is useful and appreciated.

Top skills

My knowledge of programming was useful when I started work; I didn’t know the specific language but because I’d done similar things it was easier to pick up. Problem-solving skills are also key to the work I do – and since I’ve started managing people and having more interaction with users, communication skills are more important than ever.