Scott Allen

9.00 AM

I arrive to work at 9am and start the day off by checking if there are any urgent trading items that need addressing from this morning or last night. Today there isn’t anything pressing, but I will need to remain aware throughout the course of the day, as the different markets Eclipse trades begin to open. I then have a look to see if any of my application deployments were released to production overnight and whether it is the correct time to verify them. Today I have a few that were freshly deployed but none in Australia so I have a bit of time until these processes start, as Sydney is a few hours ahead of our other offices.

9.30 AM

I am then free to make some breakfast in our office kitchen and then return to my desk to catch up on emails. My emails mostly contain project updates from various teams about projects happening across Eclipse. They help me stay on top of changes to our software stack and track the progress of projects that I am directly a part of or other bits of work I may be interested in. If I have time, I’ll also prepare or start to work on some of my sprint tasks.

10.00 AM

By now some applications in other regions have started up and I am able to begin my verification of last night’s deployments. I log onto one of our production servers and walk through some typical operations that a trader might do during a trading session. This is to make sure that when the traders use this feature themselves later during market hours, everything is in order.

After that, my team has their weekly agile “stand-up” meeting, where we share what we are currently working on and things that we have planned for the remainder of this sprint.

11.00 AM

My team also takes part in a fortnightly catch-up meeting with traders in Hong Kong to discuss any feedback or suggestions they may have about ongoing projects. I sit in on this meeting to listen and provide answers to any questions they may have, as well as delivering an update on projects that they can expect to see in the future. At Eclipse we highly value interaction between traders and developers to guarantee successful acceptance and integration of tech projects into daily trading.

Following this meeting I’m free to get a bit of sprint work in before lunch. Currently, I’m working on making some changes to our API that supports data streaming across applications in our tech stack. I’m working closely with a senior developer on these changes and we are constantly bouncing ideas off each other to come to the right solution. Once we’re happy with the changes, I will enter it into review to get further feedback from other developers before the change is merged for production usage.

12.30 PM

Lunch time! I enjoy getting out of the office for a bite at one of the many food joints in the CBD. Our office is located in the heart of the CBD which allows me to visit a large array of lunch options. Some of my favourites are Norths Sandwiches, Dorchester Café, Deli Ziosa. On some days I may grab lunch in the office as Eclipse allows employees to submit requests for food on a weekly basis.

1.30 PM

After lunch I focus on some coding for the next few hours until my next meeting starts. It’s definitely enjoyable to dive deep into some code after being in meetings for most of the morning and I’ll often achieve a lot in this small space of time. I’ll also spend some time reviewing other developers’ changes and offer feedback to help them progress through their own projects.

4.30 PM

This afternoon I have a catch up for a project that I’m a contributor on. The project is about hypothetical stock base prices. The project members discuss progress on their various individual parts and talk about how the project is going and any challenges the team may foresee in the future.

Following the meeting, I close out the day with a bit more project work.

6.00 PM

It’s the end of the day so I go to the train station near by and return home. On Mondays, I play in my local futsal competition and will head there after work.