Elmar Pallestrong

Day to day activities include:

• Lead release planning for global listed derivatives trading system powered by ION Markets
• Liaise with business stakeholders to discuss new requirements and draft both agile user stories and acceptance criteria and waterfall documentation
• Peer review all new requests raised by team members to ensure documentation is meeting standards and suggested solutions are sustainable
• Run daily scrum calls for global listed derivatives project with internal and external stakeholders, including product owners, development teams and business analysts / project managers

Main achievements in my current role:

• Introduced blend of agile methodologies and waterfall approaches to ensure documentation provided to internal and external stakeholders discusses business requirements, functional specifications, flows and suggested technical solutions in clear and concise manner.
• Helped to increase development team's output drastically by introducing a release management framework that ensures that sprint items can be delivered on time
• Run multiple global projects, including migration of 500+ traders from a legacy trading platform to a more modern user interface, delivered futures and options flows internalisation for platinum clients, identified and addressed multiple MiFID II transaction reporting issues

In my role as Fidessa ETP Platform manager for the European cash equities desk, my main responsibilities were to:

• Act as main point of contact between Jefferies and ION for all Fidessa related project issues
• Analyse and document new business requirements
• Manage the backlog and plan sprint releases with the Fidessa project team
• Test new changes and releases for PROD readiness
• Update Jefferies senior management on project status and PROD issues
• Liaise with middle and back office teams
• Liaise with internal technology stakeholders to discuss proposed technical solutions and change impact on downstream systems
• PROD support for Fidessa ETP. Flows include inbound and outbound electronic flows, IOIs, RSP.

My main duties include:

• Write business requirement documentation
• Own the project plan and backlog for multiple new build deliveries
• Ensure projects are delivered within agreed timescales

Examples of projects I’ve analysed and delivered:

• MIFIR RTS22 transaction report for a cash equities desk
• Implementation of a new middle office system for a market making desk

Working as a senior BA, my main duties and responsibilities included:

• Identifying requirements through analysis by working with client representatives, sales prospects or internal Fidessa teams.
• Drafting functional specification documents for these requirements in a clear and concise manner.
• Discussing documentation with the Fidessa technology teams to ensure the new functionality is delivered at the expected standards.
• Liaising with other Fidessa staff such as the delivery, sales and marketing teams, and with other specialists within the organisation.
• Recommending suitable enhancements and new features of the core product.
• Providing ad hoc demonstrations of product and functionality to support pre-sales activities.
• Producing and maintaining training documentation and other materials to the required standard.
• Ensuring that client systems are fit for purpose.
• Providing intensive onsite training support throught the implementation life cycle.

Key projects and roles:

Lead global BA for Nomura, RBS, RJO' Brian, Prism, Caceis, Santander, SEB, OTCex and BNP Paribas F&O platforms implementations

Lead BA for Citi F&O platfrom 3rd party algorithmic container implementation

Lead BA for ABN low-latency multi-asset market access platfrom

Scoping and testing of MiFID II functionality

Back office interface migration for various cash equities platfroms

Trader support specialist, ETP and GTP trading platforms

Main responsibilities included:

• Training institutional users on Fidessa's ETP and GTP trading platforms.
• Regular business trips to clients across Europe to demonstrate new features, and interaction with head of operations and trading desks to discuss potential improvements in business flows within Fidessa.
• Liaising closely with project managers and business analysts to ensure business requirements were correctly scoped.  
• Training and coaching team members on more advanced trading tools, such as pairs and basket trading.
• Presenting new features to support users and testing new functionality.
• Troubleshooting clients' issues.

Support Manager

Responsibilities included:

• Leading and managing a team of 10 people.
• Training and coaching staff.
• Maximising productivity of the team by improving processes. 
• Liaising continuously with senior management to identify improvements to internal procedures to increase client satisfaction.

Senior Support Analyst

As part of the customer and technical service department for eSignal,  main responsibilities included:

• Identifying market data integrity issues and outages. A deep knowledge of financial market structure was required for this task, for example, explanation of market depth and ECNs.
• Maintaining high knowledge of financial markets and instruments and eSignal products, and training team members in these areas. 
• Responding to clients billing and technical queries via inbound and outbound calls, faxes, e-mails and community forums.
• Assisting new and existing clients with the installation of the software.
• On-site support and training for corporate clients.
• Supporting of in-house charting strategies and analytical tools.
• Assisting clients with the programming of customised technical analysis and back testing strategies.