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Joao Teixeira, alumnus, BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology
From intern to analyst: Joao's summer placement experience led to whole new world of possibilities in the financial sector, where he is enjoying new challengesAs a Front Office Application Support Analyst for private fund management company Capital Group, Joao Teixeira is a man with a lot of responsibility. His role involves liaising with the company’s research analysts, portfolio manager, traders, and compliance and operations staff, as well as brokers and vendors outside the company. “It’s crucial that we minimise the impact of unplanned system failures or discrepancies with the amounts traded on the stock exchange,” says Joao. “I’m also responsible for monitoring the batch processing.”
For Joao, who always wanted to work in business technology, his role today is the culmination of spells at Goldman Sachs and Glencore, but it all started back at LSBU.
Technical and interpersonal skills
“Completing a degree in Business Information Technology at LSBU was the perfect platform to get acquainted with business and IT topics that helped me decide on the right direction for me,” says Joao. “While I’ve learned a lot since starting my career, it has all been built on a strong foundation – the journey at LSBU has shaped me into an employable candidate.”
Joao believes that his time at LSBU taught him more than just the technical skills he needed. “Most roles now require good interpersonal skills,” he says. “I was once told that a great technologist can explain something in great detail to a fellow technologist, but can also do the same in simple terms to someone with no background in technology. Technical and interpersonal skills go hand in hand in this area.”
Great opportunity
Goldman Sachs certainly agreed that Joao was an employable candidate. “I initially joined them for a ten-week summer internship, where I was assigned to a team responsible for migrating the firm’s Securities Division (Equities and Fixed Income Trading) into a cloud-based platform,” he explains. “When my internship finished, I had done enough to be offered a full-time position as a Client Services Analyst in the Technology Infrastructure Division.”
After four years with Goldman Sachs, Joao moved to Glencore, where he provided trading application and market data support to the shipping and upstream desks. “After a year at Glencore, I decided to move to a buy-side firm, which would be a great opportunity to continue expanding my knowledge,” says Joao. “That’s why I chose to join Capital Group.”
Gaining insight
It’s a decision that Joao is glad he made. “There are lots of elements in the role that are very enjoyable,” he says. “I’m right at the centre of the firm’s operations, constantly dealing with traders regarding buy or sell orders that are not flowing to the brokers, or portfolio managers who need me to investigate anomalies in reports. I’m getting an insight into every aspect of the investment management process and the longer I am here, the more I am learning – and the better I become at my job.”
Almost everything is time sensitive, so I need to be able to cope with pressure and manage people’s expectations. That’s where the interpersonal skills I developed at LSBU come in particularly valuable and help me to overcome obstacles.
Joao Teixeira
Lifelong learning
Joao has also taken a passion for lifelong learning from LSBU, and is hoping to continue growing both personally and professionally. “I want to keep on challenging myself, and hopefully take on a managerial role in the financial industry,” he says. “Ultimately, it’s all about using my IT skills and business acumen to improve services and support models.”
Read more about studying BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology at LSBU.