First Name: Tom
Position: Senior Software Developer
Location: Hong Kong
Education: Bachelor in Risk Management and Business Intelligence, Hong Kong University of  Science and Technology
Nationality: Chinese

Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology majoring in Risk Management and Business Intelligence. I found my passion in software development during my studies after I built a timetable app to optimize my class scheduling.

What were you doing before joining Eclipse?

Before joining Eclipse, I spent 4 years in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s (BAML) Electronic Trading division. This is where I was first exposed to an algorithmic trading system. It was a great experience working at BAML and my programming skills improved a lot.

Why did you join Eclipse?

A former colleague recommended Eclipse to me. I was attracted by the fact that Eclipse was re-building the trading stack from the ground up, adopting some interesting technology like stream processing with Kafka Streams. I was also curious about the difference between buy-side and sell-side, and was keen to find out which side suited my career path more.

Describe your journey with Eclipse so far

I joined Eclipse’s Frameworks IT team in 2019, which is responsible for designing data transformation pipeline for the next gen trading windows. A year later, I moved to the Trading System Development team, where I gained more exposure to the core trading systems e.g. risk, pricing, position tracking and order management. When I became more familiar with things, I was given the opportunity to manage a cross-team project, where I took part in the requirement capturing with traders, timeline estimation and eventually drafting the design of the overall solution.

Why do you like working at Eclipse?

First, I can wear whatever I like to work! Eclipse provides a comfortable working environment for me to focus on the things I am good at. The development environment is excellent. Collaboration, build chain and deployment tools are seamlessly integrated so many things can be done in just one-click. I can build proof of concept and prototype easily, and test it in a production-like environment before the actual rollout.

What would you say to someone considering a career at Eclipse?

If you like problem solving, working independently, and as part of a team, then Eclipse would be a good choice for you. You will have the opportunity to produce high quality software, and be part of the end-to-end software development life cycle – from planning, technology evaluation, solution design, implementation, testing to deploying the end product.