In-House Educational Programs

DataArt’s service model in the financial vertical depends on the level of industry expertise of its project managers and software engineers. DataArt’s crucial advantage over the competition is in its exceptionally strong resource base, comprised of experts with solid theoretical background in investment finance coupled with practical experience gained during project implementation. This powerful combination affords a host of substantial benefits to the company’s clientele.

In turn, this advantage is a result of an extensive, strategic investment in the development of our human resources. From its very beginnings, DataArt Financial Practice has provided a number of educational programs aimed to achieve the following primary goals:

• DataArt’s personnel assigned to a project in the financial vertical should be able to speak the same “language” (i.e. use and understand key business terms and concepts), as the clients’ users and stakeholders, not only their IT people.
• DataArt’s employees should continuously advance and retain their knowledge about key concepts within the company’s areas of the market focus.

The company’s training programs were pioneered in 2006, the first of them being the Financial English Program, which provides a thorough introduction to the basic concepts of investment finance. The program is based on standard undergraduate-level textbooks (“Investments” by Sharpe et al, and “International Capital Markets” by Chisholm). The program has been completed by more than 80 DataArt employees. A sufficient grasp of spoken English is a key prerequisite for starting this program.

Following the implementation of the Financial English Program, several more programs have been introduced, including:

• Open Programs: in-depth studies of various important topics, combined with practical implementation of concepts under review (for example, Security Master / market data, data vendor integration, OMS).
• Intensive Courses: special programs intended for quickly getting new team members up to speed on the crucial domain concepts (e.g., derivative pricing, index arbitrage, Greeks, etc.), or certain exotic technologies (e.g., cache managers, in-memory databases, data stream processing, etc.).
• Fin Talk: continued education for those DataArt employees who have completed Financial English Program. The course is based on advanced-level textbooks, covering such topics as alternative assets, risk management, and derivatives).
• Seminars: a series of presentations on a wide array of topics for both Financial Practice engineers and a broader audience. The topics include industry news, various aspects of the industry’s past and present trends, client case studies based on projects, etc.

DataArt is strategically committed to its ongoing educational effort, and views it as a critical part of its sustained ability to deliver outstanding results to our customers.

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