A day in the life of a Graduate Site Reliability Engineer

06:30 – A new day begins

I wake up and get myself ready for the day. Then it’s a short walk to catch the train to the office.

07:30 – Hit the gym

The first order of business is a morning workout in the gym below our office. When I feel like I’ve sweated enough, I take a quick shower and throw on some clothes before heading upstairs.

09:00 – Coffee and catch-up

Once in the office, the first item on the agenda is to grab a coffee from IMC’s in-house barista and then make myself some breakfast. I eat quickly and then head over to my desk and fire up my monitors. I’m checking for any important messages or emails from colleagues – anything that needs urgent attention. I also spend time catching up on any overnight developments that might impact my work for the day. If I've made any changes to our systems the previous day, I check that they've gone through without a hitch.

9:30 – Things get busy

Now the real work begins! The morning is the busiest time for the Site Reliability team: we need to make sure that all systems are up and running without any glitches before the markets open. The team and I keep a close eye on our monitors for anything out of the ordinary – for example, any deployments reported as being down, host warnings, or excess loggables. I also stay on top of our region-specific channels on our messaging platform, Mattermost. IMC traders use these to report anything in our system that isn’t running as it should be. We also receive notifications from developers and traders who we’re collaborating with to develop specific features within our systems. IMC upgrades its trading systems on a regular basis, so another important task is to check for any errors in the upgrade process and investigate why they’re happening.

11:15 – Team meeting

Around mid-morning, I take a break from firefighting for the daily stand-up meeting with the rest of the Site Reliability team. This is a chance for us to share updates on our work from the morning and the previous day, as well as our plans for the day ahead. It's also an opportunity to get my colleagues' thoughts and feedback on specific issues that have arisen recently, including current tickets I'm working on. It's useful to have their suggestions and see how I might approach the situation differently next time.

12:00 – Time to refuel

Time to head upstairs with the rest of the team to grab a quick bite. I’ll keep an eye out for people from my graduate cohort or any other familiar faces – sharing lunch and a chat together is a great way to unwind and catch up on the latest news. Since joining IMC, I've found everyone to be super welcoming, so I'm never short of someone to talk to!

12:30 – Back to work

It’s now 9:30 am in Hong Kong, which means their market is up and running. With no more preparation to be done for the open, the intensity has dropped a bit – so I can focus on ongoing projects and tasks. Back at my desk, I check my to-do list and decide where to focus my energy for the afternoon. Most of my longer-term project work involves making improvements to Trading Engineering (TE) processes – either by introducing automation or fixing bugs. Alternatively, I might spend time working with the developers and traders to introduce new features to improve our trading. A particularly interesting aspect of being in the SRE team is getting to work across the entire tech stack. I interact with Python, shell scripting, Javascript and k8s, as well as having exposure to networking and the platform side, too.

One of my current tasks is trying to improve the predictive effectiveness and efficiency of our trading systems by helping to roll out machine learning models across the desk. I'm also working on a project to improve the way we create the settings for the different products (or symbols) we trade. These settings (we call them "config lists") help our trading system know what to do with each symbol.

15:00 – Shifting gears

At this point in the afternoon things are less hectic, which means it's a good time to schedule any meetings. This could be a one-to-one meeting with my manager, or checking in with a colleague about a project we’re working on. I’m also involved in our corporate sustainability program, Sustainability@IMC, where I’m going to start looking at collating some of our sustainability data and automating our reporting, so there are regular meetings around that, too.

Some weeks are more focused on training. Since joining IMC seven months ago, I've already attended three additional training workshops. And that doesn't even include my Global Traineeship in Amsterdam or attending the Trading Engineering School here in Sydney.

17:30 – Wrapping up

Another workday done and dusted! I log out of my monitors and make a quick dash to the train station at Circular Quay. Living in Sydney, I’m never short of entertainment in the evenings. Depending on what I’m in the mood for, I might try out a new restaurant (the city has thousands of great places to grab a bite) or head to my local pub for a round of trivia. Otherwise, I’ll just have a quiet night in – a bit of cooking and a Netflix episode or two.

It's important to relax and recharge my batteries, because who knows what challenges tomorrow will bring. There are a lot of moving parts being an SRE graduate, and there’s always something new to learn. But that’s what makes it fun – I wouldn't have it any other way!

Do you have what it takes to be a technology graduate at IMC?