"The Operations Manager is the one you can rely on during shifts. It’s my job to make sure the trading never stops. No matter what happens."
The Operations Manager
After finishing his MSc in Sustainable Energy Technology (SET) in Delft, Saumitra started his career as Junior Operations Manager at Northpool in the summer of 2021. As Operations Manager, he has contact with all departments. "I function as trade support for the trader, but if something is not working properly, I start talking to the Data Engineers or Analyst who build the tool, communicating back to the Trader why something is not working. If there is an external problem, I pick up the phone and start calling people".
The Operations Manager vs the Energy Analyst
It is nice that I see immediate results of my work: What I make is used a few meters away at the trading desk. There is a short feedback loop between me and the users of the trading software. We can quickly make improvements or fix issues when updates don’t work as expected. We build it up together. I'm most proud of the main trading application: I developed 95% of it myself. The software can now receive tens of thousands of messages from the different market exchange per minute and process them in real time. On top of that it also needs to quickly determine which orders needs to be adjusted and send order management messages to the exchanges.
Different strategies for each situation
As a Junior Energy Trader, you start working in a simulation environment; you can play around without affecting the situation and results on the actual trading floor. For the Operations Manager, this is different. It is learning by doing, directly on the trading floor. It is important to get independent quickly, because then the trader support can be provided. "This can be stressful in the beginning, but the longer you work for Northpool and the more you understand the trading better, the more confidence you get in yourself. Every situation has a different strategy. I communicate with the trader, sometimes also our IT department and external parties at the same time, given priority to the trader, of course. The last strategy: just do the best you can to fix the problem.
