Clay says the engineering processes have been overhauled throughout the organization. The disciplined software engineering process is followed by automation, specifically automated unit testing.
“It’s a huge part of what we think about here — how to be efficient, how to have that process be as automated as possible, how to have points of accountability and a system of checks to make sure that everything is completely safe for deployment,” she says.
Is Domain Expertise Important For Engineers?
It’s Clay’s opinion, based on years of experience, that developers with deep domain knowledge are extremely valuable. The reasoning is simple — it takes longer for an engineer without domain expertise to understand functional requirements and specifications, especially if there are errors in the specifications. Clay also prefers engineering team leaders who have domain knowledge.
“There’s this debate that goes on about what would you rather have, an engineer who started as an engineer and then learned about the capital markets? Or somebody who has really deep domain knowledge about the capital markets and then learned how to be a good programmer? And I would always take the latter,” she says.
In cases where an engineering team doesn’t have domain knowledge, Clay says the business has to spend time educating and training them about concepts like capital markets, market structures, option theory, derivatives, etc. Cboe provides internal training where outside consultants and internal coaches educate employees across departments.
“We want to get everyone elevated in terms of their knowledge base,” she says. “Whether it’s internal coaching and teaching, and whether [or not] we bring in consultants, it’s happening constantly here.”
Cboe’s API Suite
Clay says Cboe LiveVol rebuilt its analytics platform last year. In doing so, it also released a suite of APIs for transaction cost analysis, market quality, liquidity statistics, and enhanced/derived data that its clients consume. Essentially, every part of the analytics platform has an API. In today’s B2B environment, most companies want to combine information in a seamless way so as not to take up clients’ desktop real estate. Clay says Cboe’s API suite is the biggest and fastest-growing part of the LiveVol business.
“The API suite we’ve delivered allows our clients to access the information they want to ingest without being exposed to a firehose of information,” she says. “They can really select exactly what calls to make on our different APIs.”