My Travels with FD – From New Zealand to NYC

Upon completing his Masters in Financial and Computational Maths, Daniel joined FD in 2017. As Daniel graduates from the capital markets training programme, he shares some of his highlights working globally as a kdb+ engineer…

Kicking off in November 2017, I began my FD journey at our beloved Newry headquarters – an FD right of passage. Although a humble start to my journey, I spent most of that time working on a global scale, sometimes working late to communicate with our team in Australia. I’d like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to @Grounded coffee and any other FDers who shared the training room with me at the time for keeping me sane.

Next stop was Sydney, Australia… where two months quickly turned into six. Although, I missed out on the Aussie sunshine due to being there for an entire winter – still, better than a UK summer!

My next location was out of left field, working remotely from New Zealand for three months. I spent most of that time in Auckland, but thought it would be rude not to visit Wellington, Queenstown and Hobbiton while I was there. The hardest part of my time here was definitely explaining to my family what day it was…

Following my time in New Zealand, I headed back to the UK to London, to work on the start-up of the KxDemo site. Nice to be back closer to home for a while.

I’ve now been in New York for nine months and the project I’m currently working on is set to grow into next year and beyond. Also, despite missing both of my previous FD Christmas Parties (due to graduating from university and being the only FDer in New Zealand) I am happy to report that I was able to break that tradition here in New York this Christmas!

I have to admit, I had a touch of cold feet when I initially accepted the job. There were a lot of unknowns and what-ifs, but it’s definitely paid off in the long run. I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who has been a part of my FD journey so far – I look forward to what’s ahead for me!

Daniel Nicholls Travels to New Zealand

Daniel Nicholls Travels to Australia

Daniel Nicholls in Australia