# Mike Robertson > Engineer at Branch International Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/mikerobertson I am an entrepreneurial-minded self-starter with strong team skills, creativity and agility. With ten years of experience in finance and technology and a commanding technical depth and exposure to buy-side phone and electronic trading, strategy development, trading system technologies, full stack web development, user experience design, and lean/agile software development, I am well equipped to develop and execute on a variety of strategic initiatives. I have worked effectively at firms with ten employees and large financial companies and have experience forming and running a web-based enterprise technology startup. I am looking for a full-time leadership role where I can work with a team to create responsive, well-designed and effective technologies delivering tangible value in demanding settings. ## Work Experience ### Engineer @ Branch International Jan 2017 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Consultant @ Bridgewater Associates Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Greater New York City Area Work on client services portfolio analytics and reporting. Primary focus is developing the Scala analytics engine itself, computations of which are piped to excel and a web front-end used by Bridgewater analysts during client meetings and by the clients themselves. There are numerous securities-related and infrastructural design challenges and strong engagement with Scala, Akka, Mockito, ScalaTest, Breeze numerical processing and a number of other Scala packages. ### Lead Developer @ Spocdoc Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | Greater New York City Area Founded Spocdoc, LLC for consulting and greenfield technology development, building more intelligent and people-focused data-driven technologies. Spocdoc's first technology endeavor was a groundbreaking web-based knowledge management system that predated significant adoption of web frameworks like Angular or Meteor. Spocdoc brought sophisticated tools like forking, versioning, and tag indexing to collaborative documents for writers, bloggers, note-takers and enterprises. The second major technology, called Iris, is a sophisticated virtual assistant that integrates email, calendar, reminders, and third-party APIs to help manage life activities, responsibilities and personal and professional goals with fun, intelligence and purpose. Iris repositions email as one component of a project- and goal-oriented perspective that radically simplifies managing communications while helping to achieve larger objectives one step at a time. Core technologies used: Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, Scala, Swift, Objective C, Cucumber, Rspec, Selenium, ScalaTest, Amazon Web Services, Linux. Scalable web service architecture using Express, Jade, Mocha, Stylus, Nodemailer, jQuery, Socket.io, node cluster, with a MongoDB backend and Redis publish-subscriber model updates. Designed user interfaces, conducted usability studies, iterated wireframes in Experience Design. Designed database schemas and wrote plugin-based extensible frameworks with exposed APIs. Created scalable markdown tree algorithms, dealt with virtual IPs, built a browser-based dependency engine and a declarative JavaScript MVC framework with server-client code sharing and server-side rendering. Trademarked Spocdoc, met with patent lawyers, formed an LLC, registered TID. Built a team and recruited from universities. ### Senior Engineer @ Credit Suisse Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 Worked in an agile environment with a geographically distributed team on internal, trader-facing risk, hedging, scenario and analytics software. Provided interface improvements, architectural adjustments for reducing latency and worked extensively in Scala on the core infrastructure. During my time at the company, an older system was deprecated, and the new system was rolled out in Europe at a larger scale. ### Consultant @ Yodle Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 Worked with a team of five in New York and Austin to re-architect the client billing infrastructure. This involved evaluating the existing system and product offerings from three external vendors. Together, we selected a vendor and refactored various parts of the legacy system to accommodate the new offering. ### Consultant @ Goldman Sachs Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | New York, NY Worked with a cross-divisional team on a web-based platform for trading, portfolio analytics and sales with over 1500 internal and external users. • Built a web analytics tool from scratch, working with dev ops, end users, the internal design team and other developers to refine the UX, architect the data storage and scaling strategy and deploy the resulting application in a highly performant, sharded environment in dev, QA and production. • Used Scala, RabbitMQ, Akka, Vert-X, NodeJS, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, numerous JavaScript libraries and web development tools (HighCharts, Backbone, Angular, D3, JQuery, Slickgrid, SASS, Gulp, git, svn, Jira, Gerrit) and internal tools & languages for project management, user management and code review (Permit, Codestream, Projito, SecDB, Slang) • Provided ad-hoc design and usability guidance for platform team members. Worked with UX team to use standard internal CSS components • Refactored a dependency publishing tool, developed an advanced interactive pivot table based on SlickGrid, and modified an Elasticsearch plugin to integrate with internal permissioning. Provided support for these tools to various groups within the company. ### Senior Developer @ Cantor Fitzgerald Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | New York • Extended, refactored, maintained, released and provided support for client trading system C++ and Java API on Windows, various releases of Linux, and Solaris • Used debugging and profiling tools on Linux, Solaris and Windows to tackle multithreading issues (pthreads, solaris threads, windows threads), heap corruption, stack overflows, memory alignment, library linking incompatibilities, network latency, packet routing, memory leaks, etc. • Streamlined the software components in the trade-flow architecture • Created a robust system of shell scripts (bash, zsh) for continuous integration and product releases • Used JIRA, Salesforce, Perforce, video conferencing, etc. with a development team split between US and UK offices • Worked with a team of 5-10 developers using an Agile workflow to design and build the request for quotes system (from market data delivery to matching to execution and settlements) ### Consultant @ Nomura Securities Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | New York • Contracted to help build an overnight mortgage risk calculation engine • Utilized JBoss, EJBs, Maven, LDAP, Hibernate, CORBA to work with RiskSpan software for the middleware of an analytics engine for agency mortgages • Became familiar with mortgage-backed securities and derivatives (pricing models, trading, etc.) ### Consultant @ L1 Partners Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 • Contracted to research trading ideas within a high frequency trading setup on the CME • Created a faster more object-oriented C++ trading system • Developed an interpolated market data system for market data that is only periodically advertised (as in HK) • Created a Bayesian system to forecast the decomposition of OU + Brownian noise • Developed a risk reporting system to forecast drawdown probabilities and give optimal deployment schedule ### Senior Strategist @ Global Trading Systems Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 | New York • Developed pricing models for futures and options Lead-lag effects in futures using an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck noise process Options pricing using Kalman filters, Heston model, kernel regression for skew curve evolution • Implemented C++ TCP/IP batch distributed computing platform using client/server model, SOCK_STREAM • Created a C++ order monitor and depth of book display using UDP multicast for market data, XLIB on unix systems • Designed and build a C++ multithreaded, cross-platform trading and simulation platform Allowed back-testing of strategies using above distributed platform for 64 parallel simulations, running a year of depth-of-book data in < 30 seconds Included a depth of book execution simulator with time priority, market impact, and adjustable latency • Designed trading algorithms and implement to (1) maximize time priority (futures/equities/options), (2) monitor and hedge intraday exposure to different options, futures and equity risk metrics, and (3) manage pair trade inventory • Created an analytical API for mathematical models – multiple regression, network file copy, compressed file read/write, Fourier and Laplace transforms, MySQL connectivity, maximum likelihood, etc. ### Trader @ Hite Capital Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 | New York • Hired to research trading strategies, backtest using data capture and replay, develop ad hoc trading tools (90% in Java, 10% in C++), and execute new strategies • Researched ARMA models of commodity futures trading, monthly periodic noise models • Created Monte Carlo simulations of mutual fund portfolio evolution • Traded Canadian/US equities: 2 ETF strategies involving NAV mean reversion (paired/unpaired), dual listed arb • Modeled price movements against changes in stock loan availability • Designed an “implementation shortfall” algorithm to mitigate market impact in ETFs when trading large % DV • Developed, tested and certified a Java fix engine based on QuickFix with two brokers Designed GUI trading interface, an API for new trading modules, and risk control measures with caps on intraday trading, dollar exposure, price moves, stop loss Certified electronic handling of trade breaks, rejects, all other FIX 4.2 messages for equities, futures • Built a market data server interfacing with Bloomberg & E-Signal APIs in Java and C++ using sockets • Designed & implemented a wait-free and lock-free reader/writer algorithm to efficiently drop messages when necessary ### Assistant Trader @ Weiss Capital Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 | Boston • Hired to model and trade closed-end funds (CEFs) and split-capital investment trusts in the UK • Executed phone based block trades (up to ~ $12 million per block) in UK markets and traded US markets electronically • Used fund prospectuses to model funds and modeled splits, pair trades, structured products, etc. using probabilistic investment outcomes • Established relationships with new brokers, negotiated fees, managed settlements and arranged stock loan • Executed new trading strategies – including pink sheet OTC securities vs UK, and pricing of structured products • Corresponded with boards of directors in writing and over the phone to press for liquidity events in CEFs • Developed programs utilizing GL Trade and TradingScreen to electronically execute different trading strategies • Worked in C# alongside a developer to improve speed of pairs trading system ## Education ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Physics Stanford University ### Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Economics Stanford University ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Science, Technology and Society Stanford University ### Physics North Carolina State University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mikemotif --- Source: https://flows.cv/mikerobertson JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/mikerobertson/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-11