Our client, a global giant in investment banking and financial services, employs over 200,000 staff, supports 200 million customer accounts, and does business in over 160 countries and jurisdictions. Whilst their mission is simple – to provide responsible financial services that enable growth and economic progress – the processes and platforms which enable that mission rely on the most modern technologies, huge enterprise datasets and continuous innovation.
Every year thousands application developers, digital product managers, data engineers and cyber specialists join the firm meaning that they are more than just a financial institution, they are one of the world’s biggest technology driven companies.
Whilst many of these new joiners are experienced engineers, almost 1,000 are recent graduates who are taking their first steps on their engineering career ladder. Neueda ensure that these graduates are ready to join their new teams and contribute to the firm’s technical success.
Beginning in 2011, Neueda partnered with senior engineers from one of the organisation’s European technology centres to design a graduate programme which combined capital markets business training with technical skills and essential workplace professional skills. The programme has continually expanded to support new graduates joining in a series of global locations, everywhere from Shanghai and Singapore across to New York, Tampa, and Toronto.
Key requirements for the graduate programme
- Two global academies for Technology Analysts and Operational Analysts to build capabilities in business-critical areas
- Teach their business’s approach to programme management including Agile methodologies for a consistent application of language, governance and process
- Professional skills development around emotional intelligence, innovation and critical thinking to increase productivity
- Aligned to the business tech stack, systems, processes and values
key requirements
Our client’s primary ambitions for the programme are to:
- Ensure new technology graduates have the knowledge to contribute to their team, with the skills to design-build-deploy applications into a high-performance enterprise environment
- Establish a connection across incoming cohorts, with camaraderie and shared purpose, helping them to collaborate and deliver optimal engineering solutions
- Create a culture of continuous learning and engineering excellence amongst new recruits as they move up the engineering career ladder, challenging themselves to attain new skills, whilst sharing their expertise with those following behind
- And with a continually evolving technology stack, the programme content needs reflect the latest platforms, tools, and best-practices which the graduates will employ when with their team.
the neueda solution
The current iteration of the programme is based around:
- An initial five-week Sprint-based classroom phase which comprises a series of technical challenges, business projects, financial-markets assignments, case-studies, guest speaker presentations and 1-2-1 sessions with instructors
- Instructor-led content covering:
– Financial markets introductory knowledge modules: Asset Classes and Money Markets; Trade Lifecycle; Regulatory Environment; Wealth Management
– Professional skills: Collaboration and Communication; Creativity and Complex Problem Solving; Networking and Influencing
– Technical expertise: Application Development with Java, Spring and Python; Cloud Platforms; Modern Development with Microservices, Containerisation, Orchestration and Automation; Enterprise Engineering and Clean Code practices
- Follow-up training and technical tutorials which punctuate the graduates first two years with the firm. These are driven by the needs of the cohort and timed to coincide with the projects they are taking on
- Access to exceptional self-directed digital content from Udemy, Pluralsight and O’Reilly
what works
Remaining current: Each year we review the classroom content and the delivery mode detail to ensure relevance and to react to feedback from participants, instructors, and business sponsors. We identify the marginal-gains and small yet significant improvements which safeguard quality.
Establishing a global network: One benefit of virtual delivery is the ability to build a professional global network quickly, and cost-effectively amongst the graduates. Having new joiners based in Asia collaborating with their Europe base colleagues, or graduates from Latin America presenting their work to new colleagues in North America has become more achievable with hybrid virtual delivery.
Pragmatic & practical training: Basing the programme around a series of real-world case studies, technical projects, business simulations, and team-based challenges helps us to achieve high levels of engagement and retention of new skills.
Continuous learning and personalisation: We often hear “Now that I am with my team, I wish I knew more about this topic or that technology” – a learning pathway that continues through the first two years allows the graduates to access new content which they can apply in their role.
Teaching Agile by doing Agile: We build the programme around a series of agile sprints, incorporating daily stand-ups, weekly deliverables, and retrospectives. Graduates get to practice their agile skills alongside using modern technical practices such as Test-Driven Development, Continuous Deployment and DevOps Automation.
Delivering business value
Over 5000 new technology graduates have come through the programme since 2011, with many of them moving into senior engineering roles and helping to shape and refine today’s content and timetable.
The time between the graduate joining a new team and contributing to the team’s success continues to reduce with the training environment reflecting the real-world.
Better-informed line-managers have a detailed picture of each graduate’s specific skillset based on their progress through the programme, their assignment results, and the instructor observations.