Andrew Taylor
Financial Technologist
ABCTaylor.com
London, England
Andrew Taylor
Financial technologist
London, England
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Nice to meet you 👋
I'm Andrew. Thanks for visiting!
I hope you're well and healthy.
💼 What do you do?
Tech at D. E. Shaw.
In a few words...
💾 I'm a sysadmin from two large hedge funds
🎓 Computer Science BSc (Durham), Management MLitt (St. Andrews)
🧮 I'm interested in trading technology and critical systems
📊 I want to work in front office one day
🌐 I'm curious about strategies that find colour in unstructured data
Skills
Soft: dealing w/ pressure, managing expectations, making stuff happen
Dev: PS, Python & Java, SQL, API development, git
Projects: managing the unexpected, getting value from vendors
Infra: NixOS, RHEL & Windows, parallel storage, databases, containers
InfoSec: keeping a tight ship
Networking: international link buildouts, routing fundamentals
Employment
Current Role
Systems Administrator - D. E. Shaw & Co.
2019 - present
Duties
I do infrastructure ops, technology projects and Helpdesk support from London at the world's first systematic quant fund.
First Job
IT Engineer - Rokos Capital Management
2018 - 2019
Duties
I provided time-critical, white-glove VIP support for a London macro hedge fund. I supported firmwide infra including storage, mail, voice, market data systems, trading apps, the core network, remote sites and data centre ops.
Education
Management (Distinction) - University of St. Andrews
My thesis used machine learning techniques to compute optimal, personalised prices for people in supermarkets based on their lifestyles. I collected over two thousand people's personal data through a survey which I fed into my neural networks. You can read my thesis here.
Computer Science (BSc) - Durham University
I graduated in 2017 with a 2:1, specialising in NLP/AI. My dissertation made EssaySlimmer.com - the world's first automatic document slimmer. My favourite (sub)module was computer vision, where I scored one of the highest marks in the school for a driverless car lane detection RANSAC algorithm. However, I still wouldn't want it driving your Tesla.
A Levels - Ballakermeen High School
I was Deputy Head Boy at a state school and did my A Levels in Maths, Physics, Economics and General Studies (ABAA*).
Achievements
St. Andrews: Dean's List
Durham: Selected as the Faculty Rep for 4k+ science students, twice Course Rep for Comp Sci, recipient of Outstanding Contribution to Academic Representation award
High School: Deputy Head Boy, Young Enterprise winning business, captain of Year 9 rugby
Interests
I am interested in quant models that use unstructured data to price securities; for example, noticing DNS requests to an unknown startup's website increasing tenfold overnight, along with positive-sentiment tweets about the firm. I have ambitions to work in a front office position.
I've played rugby, gymnastics & trampoline, shot .22 LR rifle and played some golf. I love Minecraft and X-Plane. Movies... at least a 7 on IMDB. Big into selfhosting:
Internships
What I did
Volunteer Software Developer - University College, Durham
2017 - present
Duties
University College has a long tradition of formal dining; signup is very competitive. Working for free, I spent 400 hours (and counting) developing UCFormal, a web app to handle signups, schedules, ticketing, invoices, billing, messaging and profiles. The software was a large success and handled £7,000 and 1,500 meals in its first term. I also built UCWelfare - an anonymous welfare messaging platform, and made CastleJCR.com, our website
Skills gained
HAProxy/nginx/redis, advanced PHP, DBA, UX design, security, stakeholder management
What I did
Software Developer - Natural Environment Research Council/BP
2016
Duties
I wrote software to help chemists automate job submissions to the University HPC for MD simulations. The chemistry was in relation to clay permeability under different solutions for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). EOR can extract up to 60% more of a reservoir's crude. The High Performance Computing Automator was written with Swing in Java. Screenshots here.
Skills gained
Java swing GUI development, HPC basics with slurm, SSH, some chemistry
What I did
NOC Intern - Domicilium Networks
2014
Duties
Over a week, I worked on a small research project at a cloud computing data centre, to recommend technical options for a PaaS product the company was developing.
Skills gained
BGP routing, NOC operations, DNS fundamentals, APIs
What I did
Legal & Compliance Intern - Ramsey Crookcall
2014
Duties
I spent two months at an LSE-registered stockbroker, validating customer KYC, examining trade confirms & administering investor accounts. I reported to the Head of Compliance.
Skills gained
Basic KYC/AML, stock brokering, administration
What I did
NOC Intern - Manx Telecom
2012
Duties
I did production maintenance aged 16 on the 2G Mobile Switching Centres and 3G Media Gateway Controllers, whilst watching engineers solve traffic and routing problems, gaining a basic knowledge of SS7 signalling, critical national infrastructure management and IP/voice data transport.
Skills gained
IP transport, GSM, UMTS, SS7, SMS, billing, voice, data centre
What I did
Business Owner - Black Powder (Junior Achievement)
2011
Duties
Under the Junior Achievement programme, my buddy and I opened and ran a registered company in high school, turning £300 from having just £50 investment. Black Powder operated in consumer electronics retail, selling to a captive high school audience. The company was a success and won the Junior Achievement Young Enterprise competition, "acquiring" one competitor in the process.
Skills gained
Startups, branding, business development, entrepreneurship
HPCA - High Performance Computing Automator
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