Working as an Energy Analyst
‘If you are smart and really want to grow in your career you should join Northpool’
Trisha Paul has been working as an Energy Analyst at Northpool for five years now. She started straight after her study at TU Delft. “I wanted to do something with sustainable energy and looked at options in the US and Europe. Finally TU Delft came up. I didn’t really know too much about the Netherlands. It was quite a shot in the dark from India but I was 22 years old so why not? I did my masters in climate economics so moving into energy trading was a natural next step.”
What makes this work interesting?
“I truly believe that energy trading is an important step in the energy transition so that's why I am here. I care a lot about the energy transition and the energy market itself makes it interesting for me. We are moving to the energy transition and this market is going to involve a lot. In the past we have had gas, oil and coal and in the future we will have renewables, batteries, and other storage technologies. We are a very fast growing company trading in eight countries and expanding. When you come here you work hard and you see the benefits really quickly. In the growth of the company and in your personal growth.”
What does an analyst's work week look like?
“I am a senior analyst so I work as side support on the trading floor for two days a week. The trader executes the trades but there are a lot of factors that influence his or her decision to do that trade. The analyst's job is to make sure that the information that is being received by the trader is correct. There are a lot of things we need to monitor while trading. I call them visualization tools. A big part of the job is building these tools. So that is collecting all the data that we get and putting them as a nice visual graphic for the traders to see and quickly gain that information instead of sorting through a bunch of lines.”
“The other days I am working on my own projects. In general there are meetings, there is project prioritizing and also helping to think on the overall strategy of the company. If you want to join us as an analyst it depends on what your preference is. If you are more of a data scientist you would be working more on building the models that we require but it can also be forecasting solar or wind.”
How important are colleagues?
“When you are trading you are never trading alone. At least with three people and always as a team so it is important to communicate really well with each other. You are spending eight hours focussed on the market and communication so you need to have a good relationship. That’s also why I should say that colleagues are closer to each other than in any other company.”
What kind of education and character traits are needed for this job?
“The type of education needs to be a quantitative type of study. That sounds very broad and it is. So it can be an engineering degree, an econometrics degree, economics or data sciences. Also if you work with energy of course Northpool is a place for you to come true. We have colleagues who have done chemistry, astrophysics, energy scientist but also two former poker players and a pro chess player working with us. You have to always want to do better, that is very important. If you are smart and really want to grow in your career you should join Northpool.”
