BA, Product Manager, QA Manager

RALPH RODRIGUEZ

********@*****.***

917-***-**** - Cell

CAREER SUMMARY

Dedicated professional with extensive technical and business experience in the fields of business analysis, product and project management, and quality assurance engineering and management, in both the financial and defense related industries. Career summary defines a diverse background utilizing mainframe, PC platforms, UNIX workstations, and the latest communications and network technologies for completing projects on time and within financial constraints. Skills summary includes:

Excellent communication, organizational, management, and leadership skills in all areas of IT.

Extensive business analysis and product management and design experience.

BRD, Project plan/scheduling, and use case analysis creation.

Extensive project management/BA experience in the front and middle office space.

System requirements definition, design, analysis and integration.

Business/Technical Liaison to many trade desks.

Creating a virtual PMO and implementing a program management tool firm-wide.

Providing strategic vision for the Quality Assurance and Change Management areas.

Extensive experience leading QA teams in agile, waterfall and iterative development testing environments.

Extensive executive management experience managing entire post development testing and change management teams.

Extensive Testing of FIX based systems.

Test script creation and utilization.

Capacity planning and testing experience.

Client On-boarding Management (both low touch and high touch) and KYC.

Continuity of Business and Disaster Recovery Testing and Management.

Experience with the RFP process for soliciting feedback and ultimately product and vendor selection.

Vendor Management.

EXPERIENCE

April 2006 To October 2018 COWEN and CO. LLC VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS, PROJECT AND PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

Full Project Life Cycle Manager and Business Analyst

Technical/ Management Background:

Business Analysis and Project/Product Management Accomplishments:

Lead business analyst and project/product manager for two patented Cowen products, ETF Direct and ADR Direct. Worked from the inception of these projects to create the business requirements document, the project schedule and workflow analysis and design. Managed all aspects of these projects from trader and business input, to QA, development and change management assignments as well as presenting project status to upper management. Both products were successfully launched within the desired business deadlines and are now established revenue generating trading platforms. Continued acting as the business/ technical liaison for the trade desks and for these products.

Implemented a firm wide project life cycle tracking system (virtual PMO) that is used for tracking all aspects of a project. The tool implemented was Team Foundation Suite (TFS) from Microsoft. Implementation of this tool has drastically improved project knowledge across the firm and allowed for more bug free releases and projects to production. It is also being utilized for program management as well.

Lead business analyst and project/product manager for a non-US global principal trading platform (both low touch and high touch). This extremely challenging project demanded working with the OMS vendor selected as well as the primary business drivers to analyze requirements and create a two-phase project that would allow the trade desk to utilize a bare minimum trading platform within the business time constraints and the planning of phase 2 as well that would expand and implement the full suite of business requirements. Worked directly with the firm’s development and QA teams to manage their contributions to this project and tracked their progress. Created all the workflow diagrams to assist QA and development in their efforts.

Lead business analyst and project/product manager for the firm’s OMS integration project (both low touch and high touch). This project’s goal was to take three trading OMS’s being utilized by the firm globally and integrate them into one trading OMS platform. This project is in the client and trade desk implementation phase as the integration efforts involve moving each trade desk to the new OMS one desk at a time as well as their clients.

Lead business analyst and product manager for the firm’s US ETL middle office system. Worked constantly with the middle office development team, QA and the business to continually improve the product offering. Worked on projects that would receive data from the middle office system, like Trade Advertisements, OATS generation, back office processing, trade confirms, and clearing and settlement at DTCC. This firm was a self-clearing firm so both sides of a trade were generated off of one-sided trades being processed by the middle office system. Also involved in addressing client interfacing issues when problems occurred. Acted as second level support when Trade Support was not able to pinpoint cause.

Leading the business analysis, QA and change management efforts on an ALGO engine migration project. This project involves retiring one ALGO system and moving all clients and trade desks to the new ALGO system. This project is in the client and trade desk migration phase.

Lead business analyst, product manager and tester for the firm’s Global Trade Advertising platform.

Lead business analyst, product manager and tester for the firm’s GTC order/ corporate actions platform.

Project manager for the industry tick size pilot program.

Lead business analyst, workflow analyst and product manager for the firm's client information database, which was used to define all the firm's clients, their risk parameters and their trading and clearing instructions and restrictions.

Worked with the data mining business and technology resources to create workflow and data collection requirements to be able to satisfy our internal compliance and trading personnel as well as our clients for Best Ex, and global regulatory requirements.

With the implementation of TFS, was the lead project manager for all projects firm wide making sure all standards were adhered to and enforcing those standards with the responsible project teams. The projects ranged from simple defect releases to new product implementations.

Working with different trade desks and sales people to formulate requirements and produce functional and technical specifications for development. Assist in the testing of these products once realized.

Working with compliance and the trade desk on compliance issues with certain trader workflows and formulating a solution to these workflows that would satisfy both compliance and the trade desk.

Hands on experience working with and troubleshooting production issues with Trade Support desk teams.

Experience in the integration of MiFID II reporting requirements into OMS environments.

Quality Assurance/ SDLC and Management Accomplishments:

Implemented an SDLC and change management work flow company wide utilizing Team Foundation Suite (TFS) and enforcing these standards.

Hands on managed the day to day and long-term strategic operations for a fifteen member Quality Assurance, development, Business Analyst, and project management team based in New York, New Jersey, Orlando and India with an operating budget in excess of 2 million dollars. This included managing all of the projects assigned to this team. Hired and fired personnel as needed to create more diverse and capable teams to meet the end goal of the firm’s projects.

Was the technical lead for the Quality Assurance/BA, Connectivity Services, and Change Management departments and provided the strategic vision for these departments.

Lead the test automation strategy for the technology department and implementing standards for this effort. Able to automate all exchange connection and order execution regression testing for projects that demanded this effort.

Led the COB and disaster recovery testing efforts for the firm including the participation in the annual Regulation SCI BCP/DR Testing.

Analyzed data for all OATS, ACT/TRF and middle office related projects company wide.

Worked with internal as well as external auditors and compliance officers to describe our SDLC and change management methodology for the purpose of satisfying company wide technology standardization goals.

Prepared SDLC reports for upper management from the data stored in TFS and Share Point that track:

-Development’s effectiveness in sending QA clean releases

-Quality Assurance effectiveness in finding defects

Technologies Utilized:

All FIX engines were LINUX based and XML was used to program the distribution/flow of FIX messages and tags for these engines.

ETF and ADR Direct GUI’s were internal web based front ends programmed using C++ in a .NET framework.

All backend systems were SQL server based and had to talk to the front-end applications as well be able to interpret FIX messaging and store the data in these messages. Created and used SQL queries for extracting data for compliance analysis and testing validation purposes.

All software created was stored and version controlled using Team Foundation Server.

Team Foundation Server was also customized to manage defects, projects and requirements.

September 2005 CITIGROUP/ PROJECT AND CONTINUITY OF BUSINESS To April 2006 TRIBECA GLOBAL MANAGEMENT LLC MANAGER

Continuity of Business Design and Test, Infosec Officer, Quality Process Design, Implementation and Test Software

Technical/ Management Background:

Project Management and Project Life Cycle Accomplishments:

Reviewed and verified project compliance with Citigroup standards and management policies.

Advised the business on all matters related to Software Quality Assurance and communicating role, responsibilities, and value of the software quality function to project staff.

Provided project management training to technology staff and management, and advised on matters of process, quality, policy and procedure.

Monitored all project deviations from the SDLC process and reported quality assurance metrics to senior Management on a regular basis.

Assisted development in preparing project SDLC documentation and archives for review by internal or external compliance staff and auditors.

Assisted technology project managers in interfacing with diverse Citigroup technology organizations to set up and maintain disaster recovery environments and managing, designing, and executing continuity-of-business testing and reporting test results to members of senior management.

Maintained and added to Tribeca Global Management LLC’s disaster recovery business plan and ensured the plan was current and reflected the needs of the expanding organization.

December 1994 INSTINET CORPORATION VICE PRESIDENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE/

To July 2005 PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Project Management, Test, Integration, and Capacity Planning

Technical/ Management Background:

Project Management, Business Analysis and Quality Assurance Accomplishments:

Implemented the Quality Assurance, Kernel, OS Standardization, and Capacity functions at Instinet. Interviewed and staffed these groups with qualified personnel. These groups were responsible for all quality assurance efforts for all Instinet products, as well as testing, managing, building and supporting all OS and associated kernels used for Instinet products, and all capacity planning efforts for the company as well. Group included personnel in the US and UK. Accomplishments included:

- Finding defects and working with development to implement and test fixes for releases of Instinet’s core Trading System.

- Technical advisor for the QA group.

- Assisted in all testing efforts of group personnel.

- Year end evaluations for team personnel.

- Project management of large-scale company-wide projects like the creation of the core Instinet Smart Router and Trading Auctions systems.

Technical lead at Instinet for all UNIX to LINUX application migration projects. Was responsible for converting Instinet’s core Trading system to run in LINUX.

Responsible for working with Instinet internal auditors and SEC compliance officers to describe our systems capacity and performance methodology for the purpose of satisfying SEC regulations for ECN’s.

Created and executed load and stress test scripts (both manual and automated) to test the Instinet Core Trading System.

EDUCATION

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY BE in Engineering Science Honors: AME Scholarship

Hempstead, New York Minor in Mathematics Provost List/ Deans List

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION

Fluent in Spanish

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