The talent pool in the market data industry is contracting, as the challenge of recruiting into the sector builds. At a fundamental level, this trend is being felt across the financial services sector, with news outlets lamenting a ‘brain
drain’ issue for some time.
More specific to the market data industry, however, is that its talent pool is
ageing. With data becoming ever more valuable to financial services, this will prove problematic as experts leave the field to retire. As such, recruiting and retaining the right people is key.
In an interview with Finextra, Paul Gow, founder and CEO of CJC, which operates the CJC Academy initiative, said: “The average age of market data people is in the 40s. The secure knowledge base could easily be the 50s and 60s.” There are several reasons
for this, and Gow called on the industry for more training, greater incentives to attract young talent, and to improve the advertising of market data roles.
Market data’s talent pool: Three sinkholes
- Lack of awareness
The first of market data’s challenges is the fact that specific courses for a career in market data have, for some time, been in short supply. Gow noted that a sizeable majority of executives in financial institutions are unsure what the value of market
data actually is. “This is surprising,” he said, “especially considering market data is the
second biggest spend of any financial institution, beaten by only salaries and bonuses. Buying data from exchanges is not cheap.”
Gow’s initiative, the CJC Academy, is among those working to fight the brain drain – with a two-year combined theoretical and practical apprenticeship for any interested in a career in market data. Once CJC’s course is complete, trainees are primed to take
on autonomous roles within banks or brokerages.
Gow noted there used to be a profusion of training available, but the well dried up: “In the late 1990s, a lot of the skilled people came from the market data vendors, which operated training courses on market data platforms for engineers,” he explained.
“As a career move, these guys often moved out and into the banks. With the vendors losing their talent, they decided to stop offering the courses, since all the knowledge and skill were being drained.” Incidentally, CJC was formed during the 90s, which took
over some of Reuters’ training in 2005.
Indeed, the market data landscape was very different in the 90s. All related services were managed by the data vendors. “Instead of having teams on-site looking at market data,” Gow said, “engineers and admin people would go out from the vendors to represent
clients.” In this manner, entire systems would be built by vendors, before being handed over to the banks. “If there ever were any serious issues, the vendors had a regional call-out service, whereby banks could receive support within the hour from an engineer,”
he added.
This system collapsed once the senior engineers started being recruited by the banks. “The banks grew wise and decided that their market data systems were heavily used, highly important and their biggest spend,” noted Gow. “They started to build market data
teams internally.” While this was a smart move on the banks’ part, there has been no mechanism in place to ensure the pipeline of young talent entering the field remains fully stocked.
“There’s more training available now,” continued Gow. “I’ve stood in this industry for over 25 years, and I don’t know anyone else who is offering pure market data courses. Of course, some groups offer operating system training, but nothing entirely specific
to market data. That’s why it’s so important to teach people these skills.”
- Gender issues and an ageing workforce
The kinds of apprentices who sign up for CJC’s curriculum vary greatly. “Showing interest right now are 16-year-olds curious about alternatives to the traditional college route; university graduates looking for applications for their skillsets; and older
individuals who have jumped in and out of the industry during their careers,” Gow said.
The seed for the Academy itself was sown by necessity: “I began to get a lot of requests from acquaintances asking if any work was available for their sons and daughters,” Gow recalled. “Since we are all getting older in the market data world, we decided
to seriously consider these people. This all set the tone for the Academy and our apprenticeships. It’s about passing skillsets on to young people.”
It is often the case that young people are put off by the low salaries that accompany fledgling market data careers, Gow underlined: “An internship salary could be 16k per year, but that will grow rapidly. A fully qualified individual, working at the top
of the market data world, might receive a 6-figure salary, plus bonuses. With the contracting option, however, it could be £500-800 per day.”
Unfortunately, market data faces not just an age issue, but a gender issue too. Gow mentioned that even though the entry requirements for the Academy courses are qualification agnostic, there does seem to be more interest from males than females. He aims
to redress this balance, and acknowledged that “in the UK and Europe, getting women into the engineering part of industry is a challenge. In the US or Asia, I find that women are much better represented in technical fields.”
Gow stressed that many young people already have a vivid interest in programming, whether they know it or not. The act of “taking selfies and photoshopping”, he explained, “is in essence working with a computer program, and interacting with technology. The
more we can get young people to understand that market data is not a dark art, the more we will be able to counteract this ageing, and imbalanced workforce.”
- The advertising of roles
The third sinkhole in the market data world is the advertising of roles themselves. Gow argued that “market data jobs aren’t as well publicised as they should be.”
He said it is rare that such roles are explicitly labelled, for instance, as “market data engineer” or “market data administrator”. Instead, engineers “tend to fall into these roles internally, when they are asked to build a market data server. If it goes
well, they’re offered a role as a market data engineer.”
These roles, in other words, are manifested ad hoc, and internally – as opposed to created and advertised externally for recruitment. Gow believes this is a considerable oversight, since institutions spent, globally, around
$24 billion on market data in 2023 alone. Such costs have been
rising year-on-year.
Fostering market data talent of tomorrow: A case study
So how can the market data talent pool be resuscitated? There are several ways to approach this, but the most crucial is training and awareness. Gow said that the CJC Academy begins with the fundamentals: “What do financial institutions
actually do on the trading side? What is trading?”
“To help trainees understand this world we give examples like SkyScanner, a platform which aggregates multiple flight options from numerous providers, from economy to first class,” Gow said. “People better understand the underlying principles of trading
once they are introduced to familiar case studies like this.”
Once the groundwork is laid, trainees are then introduced to networking skills and basic market data builds – all the way through to solving technical issues in systems.
“The apprenticeship runs for two years, and learning takes place in blocks of two-to-three days,” noted Gow. “If students need refreshers, we’re always on hand. There’s a lot to take in, so trainees are free to sit our courses several times.”
With the theory under their belts, prospects can shadow experienced employees and work inside brokerages or banks, for practical experience. “You can attend as many courses as you like,” Gow said, “but until you meet these concepts in the real world, in
real-time, you won’t have a thorough grasp of them.”
In this way, talent from CJC is drafted into technical and non-technical roles, like administrative analysts or developers and engineer support. As part of its “rotational scheme”, CJC takes staff from banks into its fold too, to help executives understand
what it is like to work alongside dedicated market data experts.
Gow said that “at the end of an Academy trainee’s term with CJC, many choose to remain, but some go to work at banks or brokerages. At CJC, we encourage participants not the press the eject button on the course until they are 100% sure where they have our
continued support.”
Stakeholders’ responsibilities
By training young people, courses like those of CJC’s are working hard to combat market data’s brain drain and an ageing workforce – becoming a key resource that banks and brokerages can recruit from.
To gain wider recognition for its work, the CJC Academy has been exploring curriculum ideas at the university level.
“Currently, CJC produces its certificates in-house, which are recognised by the industry,” Gow said. “However, we have been looking into getting further certification from the likes of City & Guilds. The issue is that not many at the body understand exactly
what it is we do.” Looking to the future, he underlined the need for banks to help CJC understand what kinds of certification they would recognise, for hiring purposes.
“Banks should take some responsibility for bringing young people into the market data world, with a focus on what it really is,” Gow concluded. Indeed, it is in banks’ best interests to place a high level of importance on this matter. “They should be recruiting
more actively since it is so vital.”