If you want to work in financial technology, you’re not always likely to be based in a major financial center. In the U.S., Rhode Island is offering incentives for companies to set up and create jobs, and a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments is building a new office there.
eMoney Advisors, which creates an interactive platform for financial advisors and their clients, is hiring 100 staff for a new office in Providence, Rhode Island, but is growing generally since being acquired by Fidelity in 2015, says its head of application development, Rob Ross.
“Last year we added nearly 100 new employees – so far in 2017 we’ve added another 50 across the company, and our target for this year is to add another 50. In Providence, our goal is to hire up to 50 employees by 2018 and reach 100 by 2020,” he said.
For the Providence office, eMoney will be looking to hire a range of technology professionals, including software developers, user interface and experience designers, software quality and testing engineers, product managers and associated support positions. The firm estimates that the median annual salary for that location will be $80k.
eMoney does hire candidates with financial services experience, which Ross says is “a plus but by no means a requirement.” The most in-demand skill set is a strong knowledge of programming languages. Ross says that eMoney technology is primarily built on a dot-net stack, and he specifically looks for candidates with experience working in C#, SQL, JavaScript, the React framework, HTML and CSS.
“We are an agile development shop, and we use Scrum to develop software in an iterative fashion,” Ross said. “We’re looking to hire software developers, UI and UX designers, QA testers, product managers and Scrum masters.
“Also, we’re looking to add some financial professionals who are subject-matter experts in financial planning for the software we develop,” he said.
Founded in 2000 and acquired by Fidelity in 2015, eMoney has more than 450 employees located at its headquarters in Radnor, Pennsylvania, as well as an office in San Diego, California. It had 195 total employees in the tech space at the end of last year. The company’s clientele includes registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers, banks, insurers and other financial services firms.
“We are looking for folks at an experienced level with a particular skill set and expertise, as well as an appreciation for good design,” Ross said. “When I’m looking for a software developer, I look at the types of projects that they’ve worked on – we want full-stack developers who can work in the database, front end and business logic, someone who has deep knowledge in something and broad knowledge across the board.
Ross says that typically he and his team review a stack of resumes, then ask everyone who passes that initial screening to complete a small coding sample, which they use as a talking point during the interview process.
“We like to have the candidate meet with a cross-functional team that they’d be working with, including developers, QA and a product owner or manager,” Ross said. “As far as the technical evaluation, we’ve done white-boarding questions to actually have the individual do some pair-programming.
“The key is to make sure it’s a two-way fit,” he said.
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