Open-source software—finally—is reveling in its own renaissance era on Wall Street. In its first life, circa 2009, the would-be movement was dogged by salacious headlines featuring a familiar name, one-time Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, and themes of theft, crime and misappropriation. Over the last decade, this perception has been all but overwritten. The world’s biggest sell-side institutions have gone from skeptics (if not outright naysayers) to some of the most active contributors and users of open-source projects and programming languages such as Python, R, and Java, and they’re hunting for those skilled in such areas en masse.

Open source has outrun its former bad reputation so successfully that even Goldman Sachs now has its own lead engineer on open source, Bella Wiseman, who last week gave a presentation at the Open Source Strategy Forum, an annual event hosted by the Fintech Open Source Foundation (Finos) in Manhattan.

Wiseman held an afternoon presentation on disappearing node package management (NPM) dependencies, the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. In her talk, Wiseman revealed that Goldman uses the open-source framework GatsbyJS to achieve fast browsing experiences for several of its web applications, including developer.gs.com—which enables access to the bank’s products and services, documentation, APIs, developer consoles, and related tools—and EngHub, an internal documentation site for developers. She ended her time with a nod to the Goldman Sachs careers webpage, noting that the bank is in the market for more engineers, particularly to add to her team.

A brief history

Toward the end of 2019, Goldman Sachs contributed one of the major projects given by sell-side institutions to Finos, Pure Alloy, which constitutes a logical modeling language named Pure, along with a platform and visual model tool that generates Pure-based models, known as Alloy.

Just shy of a year later, Goldman rebranded Alloy as Legend, an open-source data management and governance platform. Along with industry peers, the bank used Legend to contribute to the Isda Common Domain Model (CDM), a blueprint for how derivatives are traded and managed across the trade lifecycle, without writing a single line of code.

“This is the magic of Legend: It replaces complex code with an intuitive interface that transparently displays and explains changes. … Just months after open-sourcing Legend, we noticed a transformative shift in how industry participants collaborate and agree on trading standards through using this platform,” said Pierre De Belen, head architect of Legend and Goldman Sachs managing director and technology fellow, during a Q&A session with Goldman in July.

Open source has become a cornerstone for the development of modern technology systems. We use open source across our tech stack, and we contribute back to the ecosystem where we solve problems together with partners and peers. As a result, we look to hire and foster proficiency in open-source technologies.

Dov Katz, Morgan Stanley

Legend joined the ranks of several other bank projects, initially developed proprietarily but then open-sourced through Finos. Morgan Stanley gave Morphir, which allows engineers to automate software development by translating real-world business problems to computer science techniques and unique code. Citi put up DataHub, a set of Python libraries dedicated to the production of synthetic data for use in tests and trainings. Deutsche Bank offered Waltz, which shows where applications reside, what they do, and how they’re connected, assisting with key performance metrics, data lineage, regulatory responses, application rationalization and migration programs. JP Morgan presented Perspective, an open-source data visualization engine.

Worst-kept secrets

“Good technologists follow the good technology,” says a recruiter specializing in financial technology. “It used to be, back in the day, you went with Microsoft because you couldn’t get fired for going with Microsoft. These days, you get fired if you don’t go with something more.”

The recruiter added that they are currently working with a developer who left a large US hedge fund because of the firm’s unwillingness to let them use open-source tools and technologies in their work. The candidate is specifically seeking a financial services firm that will allow and even encourage use of such tools.

“For a technologist, what you work with on a day-to-day basis is everything,” they say.

When I put out a job—I mean a really good job—I might get 10% to 15% response, and 20% would be huge in the best of times. These days, when I put one out that says ‘remote,’ I’d probably say 85% to 90% of response I get is from people working at banks—people being forced to go back in—and technologists don’t want any part of it.

Fintech recruiter

Gabriele Columbro, executive director of Finos, says that getting banks and, increasingly, even some regulators—Sultan Meghji, chief innovation officer of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), also spoke at the Finos conference—on board with open source has been the result of systemic changes in the industry over the last decade.

“As much as I’d like to take credit, fully, for what’s going on here, it’s mainly three things,” Columbro says. “First of all, it’s 10-plus years of shrinking margins [and] the cost of regulation going up 40%. There’s just not as much money to throw at any problem as they used to have.” He adds demand for democratization as a second point, and cites examples such as the fintech boom, cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and for better or for worse, the ongoing memestock saga. And lastly, while it’s become an overused, somewhat gimmicky phrase, it’s also true: Banks have a mandate from the market to double as tech companies.

“To me, open source is the least kept secret of the West Coast,” says Columbro, who is based in Oakland, California. “If you keep reinventing the wheel—while on the West Coast tech firms probably build 80% with open source and focus their efforts on the 20% that is differentiating—well, banks are going to keep accumulating delays.”

That sentiment begets another question: Is Wall Street or Big Tech the more attractive choice for the most skilled and eager talent? A factoid perhaps indicative of an answer: The fintech recruiter is not having much luck filling jobs that require employees return to the office, even on part-time bases.

“When I put out a job—I mean a really good job—I might get 10% to 15% response, and 20% would be huge in the best of times. These days, when I put one out that says ‘remote,’ I’d probably say 85% to 90% of response I get is from people working at banks—people being forced to go back in—and technologists don’t want any part of it,” they say.

If you have the skills, it’s pretty easy to get a job, and get a job that’s high-paying as well. It’s a challenge we’re facing not only here, but on every other firm on the Street. The number of open requisitions and the heat of this market right now is ridiculous.

Tier-1 bank tech exec

One technology executive at a tier-1 US bank, who is not authorized to speak publicly for the bank, agrees. The latest work-from-home schemes induced by the Covid-19 pandemic is not giving banks any leverage when it comes to recruiting, compounded by the fact that the number of available resources is far fewer than the number of open positions.

“It’s definitely what I would call a seller’s market right now. If you have the skills, it’s pretty easy to get a job, and get a job that’s high-paying as well. It’s a challenge we’re facing not only here, but at every other firm on the Street. The number of open requisitions and the heat of this market right now is ridiculous,” they say.

Though the source did not have a definitive figure for the number of currently open technology positions, including for open source, across the bank’s global locations, they believe the number to be in the thousands. “I’ll be honest with you: Whether other firms are going to admit it or not, I can tell you there is a lot of turnover right now in senior technology positions because people are looking for quality of life,” they add.

Is anyone out there?

In trying to construct a more tangible sense of market demand for technologists skilled in open-source tech, WatersTechnology asked Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence company that ingests and standardizes millions of public employment records to understand the workforce dynamics, to compile all the currently open job listings requiring some level of open-source skill at Goldman, Citi, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Nomura, and HSBC, all of whom are platinum or gold members—the two highest membership tiers—in Finos.

Revelio’s data, which is sourced from aggregators and companies’ public websites, found that banks had listed at least 74,938 job openings from August 1 to November 15 requiring at least one type of open-source skillset, including but not limited to fluency in modern, open-source programming languages such as Python, R, and Java; understanding of Linux-based infrastructures; and familiarity with mySQL and MongoDB, two popular open-source databases. The listings were for graduate and professional positions organization-wide in all global locations. The company deduplicated exact matches from different sources.

WatersTechnology attempted to confirm more specific figures provided by Revelio with their corresponding banks, but those who responded to requests for comment were unable to independently validate the data. A spokesperson for Citi declined to comment.

Dov Katz, Morgan Stanley managing director and distinguished engineer, as well as Finos chairman emeritus, says that hiring engineers skilled in open source helps the bank’s technology teams push boundaries in client services, day-to-day business operations, and the industry at large. 

“Open source has become a cornerstone for the development of modern technology systems. We use open source across our tech stack, and we contribute back to the ecosystem where we solve problems together with partners and peers. As a result, we look to hire and foster proficiency in open-source technologies,” Katz tells WatersTechnology. 

On its face, the collective number is astonishing, but there’s more to it than first meets the eye. Crucially, many of—and likely most of—these numbers have very little or nothing to do with the type of advanced open-source projects that are operated under the domain of Finos. In reality, they more than likely make up the bulk of all technology and data positions available at any given major sell-side institution, which, perhaps most importantly, means that once-maligned open-source technology and tools have succeeded in weaving themselves cozily into the guts of Wall Street’s biggest names.

“Software is leading the world, and open source is leading software,” says Finos’s Columbro. “I don’t know that, nowadays, there can exist a job description that does not require you to know an open-source technology.”