Martin Vavra, Electronic Trading Technology

Prague Technology Centre

Vice President, Barclays' Smart Order Router (BSOR), Internal Crossing Engine (LX), and Central Risk Service (CRS)

I was first attracted to Barclays because they had a reputation for difficult job interviews and tests, and I saw this as a challenge. I’m pleased to say that now I’m here, the work has been equally challenging and very rewarding.

I started working in the ‘Algo Core’ team, supporting the infrastructure of our equities algorithmic trading platform LMX. Then I became interested in working on LX, our internal crossing engine. This was the first trading algorithm I had the chance to work on, and I become the sole owner of the product. Since then, I’ve worked successfully on MOOP – Barclays’ new strategic market data consumption component, which is being used more and more and has replaced legacy and inefficient components.

There are a lot of very smart people here...

I’m now leading a new team in Prague, developing and maintaining BSOR (Barclays’ Smart Order Router) and Central Risk Service. I’m proud that our team has picked up this complicated piece of technology and made it happen.

The great thing about Barclays is that I get to work on great technological pieces, while seeing the effect they have on this important business. There are a lot of very smart people here, and I love working with them.