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Jacob Clifton
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GMO LLC · 2015 to 2018

Global Equity Trade Scheduler

Replaced the spreadsheet workflow behind billions of dollars of equity execution with an automated, error-resistant platform.

Role · Product owner and developer.

The problem

The firm scheduled global equity execution through manually maintained spreadsheets. The process worked, but every step depended on a person not making a mistake, and the cost of a mistake was measured in basis points on very large notional.

Approach

  1. 01

    Mapped the manual workflow end to end with the traders who ran it, rather than designing around an idealized version of it.

  2. 02

    Built an automated scheduler with validation at each boundary, so the common failure modes became impossible rather than merely discouraged.

  3. 03

    Rolled out alongside the legacy process until the new system was demonstrably at parity.

Outcome

Became the mission-critical system for executing billions of dollars in trade volume, removing an entire class of manual error.

Stack

C++PythonSQLWorkflow automation