Alignment Systems is a consulting business with a number of different work streams.
We focus on these business areas
Global, Multi-Asset Electronic Trading (95%)
- Buy-Side
- Sell-Side
- Interdealer Broker
- Trading Venue
- Stock Exchange
- Digital Assets (tokenisation, custody, security)
- Traditional Technology Vendors
- Data Vendors
- Fintech
Automotive (5%)
- MQTT
- Internet-of-things (IOT)
We focus on these functional areas
Product Management and Product Marketing
Assist vendors with product market fit analysis
Design complex workflow models for technology
Design marketing strategies for technology firms that need to augment in-house product marketing
Connectivity
Protocol creation - creation of parts of the FIX protocol
Creation of FIX Interactive Interface Definition Language (FIIDL) which became FIX Orchestra
First EMEA buy-side to trade Shanghai & Shenzhen using QFII and account ids using FIX.
Broker restrictions - enrich buy-side OMS to EMS flow with real-time broker restrictions (must use, must not use)
Systems integration - connect buy-side OMS to EMS in real-time using FIX
Systems integration - connect buy-side PMS to OMS in real-time using FIX
Systems integration - connect sell-side FIX engine to internal systems (data enrichment) in real-time
Systems integration - enrich sell-side FIX engine received message to canonical representation (data normalisation & denormalisation) in real-time
QuickFIX/J - designed and built enhancements for missing functionality
QuickFIX/J - designed and built message replay system for regression testing
FIXP-SBE-SOFH - designed and built (greenfield) complete FIXP-SBE-SOFH system
FIXP-SBE-SOFH - designed and built (greenfield) complete FIXP-SBE-SOFH testing system
Business Analysis and Technology Deep-Dive Review
Conduct arms-length, 'no-axe', deep-dive review of technology within an organisation
Portfolio Management workflow analysis and enhancement
Blotter review and clean-up
Broker review and clean-up
Workflow review and clean-up
Compliance rules review and clean-up
Development Management, Development, Architecture, DevOps
Interim development management
Search and hiring development management
Search and hire development personnel
Design of testing models for Electronic Trading
Integration of Electronic Trading systems into DevOps tooling
Hands-on development in a variety of languages including
- Java
- C#
- JavaScript (client and server)
- Visual Basic for Applications
- Python
- SQL - several varieties
- q
- R
Advisory
Collaborate to enhance capabilities in a hands-off role
Due Diligence
Assist Private Equity and Venture Capital firms in functional and technical due diligence on investments.
Expert Witness
Collaboration with litigation teams on fintech related law cases.
Data & Data Analytics
Gather, clean, normalise, process heterogeneous data sets, perform analytics, calculate metrics, generate alerts, integrate with DevOps, visualise and display. All in real-time.
We work with these asset classes and trading styles:
Asset Classes
Equity
Fixed Income Rates & Credit
Futures
Options
Foreign Exchange
IRS
CDS
Trading Styles
Care desk order flow
Single item DMA
Single item Algorithm
Program trading
Algorithmic program trading
RFQ
RFS
Negotiation workflow
Central limit order book
Auctions
We work with people with these titles and their teams:
Head of Trading
Head of Market Data
Head of Quant Trading
Head of Compliance
Chief Technology Officer
Lead Quantitative Analyst
Chief Information Officer
Chief Data Officer
Head of Development
Head of Quantitative Development
Head of Delta One Desk
Head of ETF Trading Desk
Chief Executive Officer
Global Head of Connectivity
Head of Fixed Income Trading
Head of Rates Trading
Global Head of Trading
Head of Pre-Sales Engineering
DevOps Lead
Head of Connectivity Services
We work with a wide range of technologies:
Protocols
- FIX
- FIX Orchestra
- FIXP-SBE-SOFH
- MQTT
- RESTful/WS/JSON
Middleware
- Solace
- AMQP RabbitMQ
- JMS
- WebSockets
Data Platforms
- Bloomberg b-Pipe
- Activ Financial
- Bloomberg Professional
- RMDS
- Factset
Server & Desktop Applications
- Excel, Excel RTD, VBA
- Node.js/JavaScript/HTML5/CSS
- OpenFin
- Adaptable Tools
- Charles River Development (CRD) Investment Management System
- thinkfolio
- Fidessa
- ION Marketview
- ITG Triton
- Portware
- Tradeweb
- MarketAxess
- Bloomberg
- MTS Bondvision
- Liquidnet
- FXAll
- FXConnect
Operating Systems
- Windows
- MacOS
- CentOS
- RHEL
And others that are older such as VMS, AIX...
FIX engines
- QuickFIX/J
- Cameron
- FIX Flyer
- TransactTools
Development Tools & Languages
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Microsoft Visual Studio Code
- intelliJ
- Eclipse
- Gradle
- Python
- Java
- R
- SQL
- C#
- JavaScript (client and server)
- Visual Basic for Applications
- q
- R
And others that are older such as Visual Basic 6, TCL/TK, JCL...