Fitzroy Eccleston

"I have been working in the Murex world for over twelve years now, which is long enough that I have stopped trying to explain what Murex is at parties. I started out in support, which is a good place to start because you see everything that can go wrong, and I have built on that ever since. I moved into service delivery management a while back but never wanted to lose the technical side, so I have kept my hands in it, and more recently I have been building skills outside Murex as well. Away from work I play snooker and pool and watch Arsenal every week with varying degrees of enjoyment. Mostly though my time goes on my two daughters now, who have a way of putting everything else in its place."

“A few years into consulting I realised I wanted more than the technical side of the work. I still enjoyed it, but I'd started managing a small team in my previous role and found that was the part I kept thinking about after hours: how to get the best out of people, how to keep a client relationship healthy. First Derivative saw where I was heading and moved me into client leadership and service delivery. The Murex practice was small when I joined, which meant the opportunities were there to grow quickly, take ownership of processes and learn on the job, with people around me who were happy to help when I needed it.”

"My role has changed a good deal since I joined. I started out leading service delivery for a smaller client in Scandinavia, and over time I took on larger Murex teams supporting Tier One investment banks. That pulled me onto the senior leadership team for what were then the Murex and Managed Services practices, so alongside delivery I was contributing to strategy, pre-sales and major client proposals. More recently my focus has moved into AI, where I'm leading the development of an AI Trading Platform Assistant covering operational support and the wider development lifecycle."

One of the best parts of the job has been working with people from all over the world. I have been based in London throughout, but the clients rarely have been, so a normal day might start with a team in Asia Pacific and finish with one in North America. Every client has its own culture and every team its own way of working, so you're constantly adjusting to how people want to be dealt with. That has probably taught me more than any technical training did. Delivery problems are rarely just technical, and getting them resolved usually comes down to listening properly, adapting to how the client operates and having built enough trust beforehand that people tell you when something is going wrong.

"The biggest lesson has been that you are never going to know everything, and that gets easier once you stop treating it as a gap to close. Someone will always know a given area better than I do, and knowing who that person is has turned out to be worth more than trying to catch up with them. Breadth helps in my role because it lets me see how the pieces connect and where a problem is actually coming from. Most of what I have delivered has come down to knowing who to bring into the room.”

"Two stand out, for different reasons. Varma stays with me because it was my first client at First Derivative, and being the newest person in the room on your first engagement is a fast way to learn. Both the client and the FD team were great to work with and generous with their time, and a lot of how I run delivery now started there. More recently it has been the AI Trading Platform Assistant. Building something from nothing is a different kind of satisfying to running a delivery well, and I have not had many chances to do it, so this one will stick."