Jessica Imhoff

Describe your background and career at UBS

I first joined UBS as an intern in Operations in 1998. I loved working at UBS, and was excited to be offered a job to come back to once I finished my degree in Maths at St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

After graduation, I travelled around the world before starting work permanently in April 2000.

After 18 months on the analyst training programme in Treasury Product Operations, I moved to Market Risk Control for government bond and interest rate derivatives, where I really got to grips with the markets and learnt about risk management.
By this time, I’d been working for nearly 3 years, but still didn’t feel I’d found my vocation in life. I talked to friends and colleagues to find out what other options there were, and found my next role right on the doorstep – I moved into IT as a Business Analyst for the interest rates derivatives system I had been using as a Market Risk Controller!

My planning and organisational skills soon led me into project management, and I spent the next 4 years coordinating projects such as the global migration of IR options onto a new modelling platform, or enhancements to our internal structured credit derivative risk management system. In this role I managed a team of business analysts and software developers.
I am now the Programme Manager for the Phi Analytics library. In this role I am responsible for coordinating across all the many and varied clients of the library, managing our budget, and ensuring that our modelling strategy maintains us at the forefront of the industry.

Why did you choose a career in IT?

I was looking for a job where I could plan my own time, rather than having my day planned for me by market events.  Many of my friends worked in IT, and I liked the sound of the working environment. It was a big step to take at first, because it was never something I’d considered, but I remembered many happy hours programming a ZX Spectrum 48k with my Dad when I was 7 years old, and I took the leap.

The environment proved to be exactly what I wanted – I am constantly surrounded by intelligent, individuals who are driven to deliver creative solutions to a variety of problems. 

How would you describe the work environment / working culture at UBS?

When I was choosing who to work for, I attended presentations from many companies, and I chose UBS because everyone I met was an “individual”. At the time, I told friends I applied to UBS because I could just be myself.  A decade later we now have a word for this – diversity – and I am pleased to say that this core value was actually ingrained within UBS even before we had that word.

Another word we often use is collaborative, by which I mean there is a real sense of working together with others – you never feel left on your own to achieve something, you’re always part of a team.

I also make the most of the way UBS encourages work/life balance, and how the firm supports music and the arts. I am a member of the UBS Choral Society, and I always amaze my friends by telling them about the opportunities I have through such an active and varied sports and social network.

Can you share a few words of wisdom for those people who are thinking about joining UBS?

When you are choosing an employer or a new department, try to meet some people who work there to get a feel for the culture. Everywhere has its own culture and you have to find the place you feel most at home.

What are your tips for success at UBS?

Ask. Don’t wait for it to come to you.

What do you think could be done to actively encourage more women to join the technology market place in general?

We need to raise awareness about what a job in technology really entails. Women are generally sociable, and the general misconception is that software developers are geeks who sit and code all day with their headphones in, never talking to another soul.  Nothing could be further from the truth, so we need to present the reality.

I also have a strong view that this is a long-term change, and we need to start young. I was open to working in IT because my Dad actively encouraged me to join in with him when he was discovering computers himself. The change starts with each of us working in IT right now encouraging our children that IT is accessible for everyone. If you have a home webpage – get your daughter uploading the holiday pictures and designing the pages. We all started somewhere!

What books / websites would you recommend to others?

Controversially, I actually do not learn well through reading books or websites. I much prefer to talk to people about what they are doing, and learn from discussion and demonstration. If I had to recommend a book, you can never go wrong with Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Don’t Panic! has become a bit of a personal mantra!