Junior Energy Operator for Hartree meaning.
Hey all,
After some exhaustive research that has given me basically zero insight into what this role entails, I decided to resort to WSO. I am being interviewed for a Junior Energy Operator role at Hartree Partners, London in 5 days and need to get an idea of what I'll actually be doing, and my career prospects if I decide to fully invest myself into this process. I'm asking because I'm currently employed at another company (completely unrelated to commodities or trading in general) making £35,000 a year. My current job is pretty stress-free and I basically always work from home, and do next to nothing except when necessary, allowing me the freedom to learn and do what I want 90% of the time. The role advertises a maximum salary of £35,000 as well, and entails the following responsibilities, as per the description:
The successful candidate will be joining a small but experienced Operations Team that supports 15+ Gas, Power and Emissions Traders. The team has an excellent blend of senior and junior staff, and we are looking for a recent graduate with good technical skills to help supplement the team as trading activity continues to expand with front office and logistical support. The management team has proven to develop its staff and will ensure you will learn all you need for a career in energy trading operations.
Providing front office and logistical support. Responsible for the accurate nomination and scheduling of energy trades and flows on a daily basis.
Coordinating day to day checking of positions and resolution of disputed positions. Occasional deal entry and other trader support tasks.
Resolution of queries from back and middle office colleagues.
Troubleshooting systems-related operational issues that occur in day-to-day activity.
Providing on-call support and remote log-in for 1 in 4 weekends.
Coordination for known ‘events’ (New Year/New month/Time change) for specified markets.
Ensure compliance with contractual and licese obligations, working in line with regulatory and policy requirements.
Responsibility for planning and implementing assigned one-off projects.
Aid in streamlining or automating daily repetitive admin tasks.
Given the above description, I keep asking myself if it'd be worth the career change given I'd be paid the same amount. What does the day to day actually entail? (would love to hear from someone with experience). What would my future prospects look like? Will I be stuck as a crappy assistant for the front office team forever? Could this role lead me to pivot to more lucrative positions? Is it worth negotiating a higher salary, and if so, what would a sensible amount be to ask?
Thank you all in advance and I look forward to hearing your opinions.
"I'm asking because I'm currently employed at another company (completely unrelated to commodities or trading in general) making £35,000 a year. My current job is pretty stress-free and I basically always work from home, and do next to nothing except when necessary, allowing me the freedom to learn and do what I want 90% of the time. "
I would stay at your current thing. You aren't going to be able to do the same in energy ops.
Also the job description literally lists out what the new job would consist of. You would be on the ops team assisting the traders at Hartree - so a lot of emailing, being on-call, etc administrative work.
What is the career progression like in your current job? Actually, what do you currently even do?
At the moment I work for a small team that got acquired by a global analytics company, building/training classifiers. I use a tailor-made platform to flag positive/negative documents which then train an AI to detect similar ones from a database. This work is tailored to customer's needs. It is not engaging at all and doesn't require any analytical knowledge whatsoever. There's a client-facing side to this role, in which I present results etc, and in the future will be given my own accounts. I honestly don't know what career progression looks like beyond becoming a full fledged consultant working with clients etc, which I don't see myself doing. I've used the time granted to me by this job to up-skill by developing several quant projects in C++ and python in the hopes of jumping jobs. A considerable silver lining is that recently I was given access to their global SQL database which has afforded me the freedom to experiment with data analysis and build whichever projects I want, from whatever data I can use from their database. The reason I ask if it'd be worth involving myself in this interview process is because of the current freedom I have. Can I build an impressive enough work portfolio here or would having Hartree Partners on my CV be more beneficial? Also, if I can negotiate a salary jump to, say £42,000 given my programming knowledge, maybe it'd be worth it? Give me your honest thoughts. Thanks for your reply!
I'm not as familiar with the UK job market, but I would say to stay at your current thing unless you don't think there's much hope to progress currently.
There will be career progression at a shop like Hartree, but the skillset is different (communicating trade info or etc). You could integrate data analysis into the role and I'm sure it would make it more efficient, could maybe leverage your knowledge of that to negotiate salary. But the freedom you currently have is something you most likely won't have at this new job.
I have seen people in trade ops move to a data science role in trading, but my thought was:
your current role -> hartree trade ops (+2-4 years) -> data science role in trading
vs
your current role -> new data-related role
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