IT Developer

Background
In the UK, AXA occupies market leading positions in three of its main markets. These are life insurance, health insurance and general insurance. We are the second largest company in the Life and Health insurance (stock) market and the sixth largest company in Europe (Fortune Global 500 2007). We are also recognised as one of the top 20 best big companies to work for in the UK by The Sunday Times.

Architas Multi-Manager Limited (Architas) is a multi-manager investment company and a member of the AXA Group. Launched in July 2008 we believe that, through the innovative use of technology, we can aim to deliver performance and value to investors in multi-manager funds.

The company's ethos is to deliver superior investment performance from a market-leading multi-manager proposition, combining the best of current market offerings with new cutting-edge thinking and investment design.

The company will be a progressive investment business which aims to transform the way the management of investments is viewed, with the focus on delivering customer-centric solutions.

The role
We currently require an experienced Excel / VBA / .Net application developer to expand the existing team to meet the demands of several exciting projects and the role will be to produce good quality code to specification and to assist during the development and test phases. Specifically this will mean:

· Undertake activities as directed by the line manager or project manager.

· Personally responsible for producing code that is fit for purpose, unit tested, delivered on time and that adheres to departmental development standards.

Technical Skills
Essential Technical Skills

· Excel VBA and Access skills

· Microsoft C# and .Net Framework

· Knowledge and Experience of using SQL Server 2005 specifically using T-SQL in Creation of Stored Procedures and Functions.

· Proven Relational database design and programming skills.

· Some experience of technical leadership and system design.

· General understanding of distributed system architecture.

· Full project lifecycle experience

Desirable Technical Skills

· Experience of working with large distributed transactional systems.

· Unit testing (formal/informal, NUnit/Visual Studio)

· Solid understanding and proven experience of OO programming techniques.

· Programming Web services, windows services, business and data logic assemblies.

· Advanced SQL Server 2005 skills including SSIS and Performance tuning.

· Experience of Bloomberg, Reuters and/or Thomson would be a distinct advantage.

System Knowledge/Specialist Areas

Essential

· Experience of working within an investment or asset management enironmeny

· Motivated, self starter.

· Proven ability to work within large multifunctional teams in varied business areas, (such as business analysts, testers, administrators etc).

· Experience of writing technical specifications.

· Good verbal and written communication skills.

· Excellent organisational skills.

· Proven ability to work to timescales.

· Able to question and challenge suggested solutions where appropriate.

· Undertake technical end-to-end Solution Design, both conceptual and detailed as necessary. This would cover both functional and non-functional requirements. Work with the business in defining solutions that support the current and future business vision.

· Undertake product evaluation and selection following an agreed process and selection criteria

· Develop and maintain detailed documentation of information relating to the solution. The solution design at both the logical and physical level to include data analysis modelling, dataflow design and process decomposition. Testing to include strategy, test plan, test conditions at user, system & integration levels.

Key decision makers

· Co-ordinate the implementation and handover to maintenance support within the given parameters of the assignment.