Covestor Blog

Job Opportunity - QA Engineer - London

Do you have a perfectionist's nature? If you like to break stuff and understand why it broke, enjoy taking a vague description of a bug and defining it precisely enough for a computer to reproduce it, thrive a in a rapidly changing startup environment then you will love your job at Covestor!

Role

• QA Engineer & Analyst, Web & Automation at Covestor Limited (Central London, UK). The QA authority within Covestor. 
• A full time role to help Covestor deliver its software projects to a high quality level: deliverables that are fit for purpose and useful to our users.
• Identify defects using manual and exploratory tests both on the web site and server side processes.
• Design and develop new automated regression tests so Covestor can test itself automatically - using Selenium 2.0 for the website and Groovy scripting for back end processes.
• Record faults (in Trac), investigate and verify fixes. Identify opportunities to add to the automated test suite.
• Work closely with the existing engineers and project manager to ensure deadlines are met.
• Review requirements and attend bug review meetings where necessary.
• Champion testing excellence and building QA competencies into the rest of the team.

Experience / Skills

Our technology stack is Java (including Groovy), Linux, Apache and Postgres.

• 4+ years as a QA professional, in a web environment. This includes defining test strategies, exploratory and good old fashioned manual testing. Ideally some of this experience has been gained at a startup.
• 18+ months of test automation experience in a web environment, including both website and back end systems. Any experience with Selenium and Selenium 2 a bonus. Experience with at least one scripting language - Groovy preferred but any of Python, Shell or Perl also counts.
• Experience with SQL and database technologies - Postgres preferred but any mainstream relational database also counts.
• Experience with QA methods and how they apply or should be adapted in an agile, light-weight, rapid turnaround engineering environment.
• Some experience of performance, stress and scalability testing.
• Reasonable level of comfort with financial maths and financial terms.
• Bachelors degree - Computer Science preferred.

Personal Attributes

• Technically oriented self starter, able to make progress with minimal supervision.
• Ability to work effectively within a tight knit team.
• Analytical and methodical with an attention to detail.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Seeks ways to 'make things better' step by step, keeping immediate and longer term goals in mind.
• Able to prioritise and work within tight time scales to meet deadlines.
• Has the self confidence to sign off a release as good to go or to make the case that it should not.
• Can accept and act upon constructive criticism.

What to do Next

Covestor are seeking only passionate, energetic and ambitious individuals with the relevant experience, eligible to work in the UK and able to attend interviews in London.

Send your CV to jobs0710@covestor.com.

Please do not apply if you are not eligible to work in the UK or unable to attend an interview in London. No agencies please.

Job Opportunity - Editor, New York

Covestor is seeking a financial journalist for a newly created role as Editor. Reporting directly to the head of marketing the successful applicant will be responsible for helping Covestor address people’s financial needs. The Editor will lead on building the profile of the managers on the platform, for supporting the sales and marketing team, and for all editorial on the Covestor websites.

A key part of the challenge is to understand and translate the strategies on the platform for ordinary investors. The right candidate will be able to articulate clearly what the managers are doing both to everyday investors and to the media. 

Key Responsibilities

1. Increasing traffic and engagement - building up the content about and from Covestor members for our own and third party distribution

• significantly build the body of Covestor generated content
• responsibility for profiling and building the public personas of the model managers on the platform
• developing basic educational investing and marketing materials
• generating newsworthy content from site activity or market commentary
• working closely with Compliance to ensure all output conforms to advertising regulation

2. All editorial on the Covestor websites

• Covestor.com - curating the community and communicating the strategies of models available to mirror
• Live.covestor.com - our daily news and market blog
• Blog.covestor.com - our company blog covering new features, announcements and events

3. Owning communication of the Covestor product (i.e. great investors and their strategies)

About You

This role is ideally suited for someone who is passionate about telling peoples stories. We are looking for a great communicator, with proven ability to help ordinary investors cut through financial jargon. The successful applicant is likely to be working in financial journalism, either with an offline financial publication, or with an investing website or service.

As the key member of a small team you will want to be an important part of growing a major online business from the ground up. The right candidate will be self motivated, have a great working knowledge of the markets, and an able to speak to investors at all levels of sophistication.

Covestor is changing the landscape in one of the world's largest industries.  We are looking for a smart go getter, looking to engage people online and to tell our members stories to the world.

Key Competencies

Required

• Three to five years of financial journalism
  
• Strong working knowledge of financial services and investing
  
• Basic HTML
  
• Proven written English skills
  
• Graduate degree
  
• Drive and passion

Preferred

• Web editorial experience.  Ability and comfort with systems (e.g. content management systems, blogging etc.) and style
• Understanding of online marketing and social media
• Having worked in a start-up

Covestor is changing the landscape in one of the world's largest industries.  We are looking for a smart go getter, looking to engage people online and to tell our members stories to the world.

Benefits of Role

• Key early member in innovative financial service
• Potential for significant growth as Covestor's offering grows
• Part of a highly motivated team

To Apply

This position is based in New York. Only candidates able to attend interview in person should apply.  Send your resume and current salary details to job200810 [at] covestor.com.  NO AGENCIES.

Covestor Live Goes Live Again

Our daily market and manager blog, Covestor Live, has had a face lift and is rapidly building its reputation. The blog, that covers the moves of our model managers, as well as the movements of the markets, news and analysis is now a featured provider on both Google Finance and Seeking Alpha.

Categories on the blog include:

• A market wrap up: Covering the intra-day movement of the markets and the major stories impacting them
• Manager spotlight: Highlighting some of the managers on the site and their top holdings
• Analysis of new positions: Coverage of new positions taken in model managers portfolios, by the manager themselves and their perspectives on the companies involved
• Guests posts: From third parties and from the managers themselves

It is one of the first times you can follow through from a blog and not just see the performance of the commentators, but even mirror their live portfolios. We will be adding plenty more content shortly and so if there are things you would like to see, or want to contribute yourself, do get in touch. We are building Live as the leading destination for credible market commentary so please help us to keep making it better.

Investment Advisors Joining Social Networks: Adding to the evidence

 We have recently run a survey which supported our own evidence that 2010 is the year that Investment Advisors really embrace the internet. Held back by concerns about compliance they now seem to be looking to sites like our own to help them find and better engage with clients.

Some interesting findings included:

• 60 percent of the RIAs surveyed already had their own blogs
• Clients who expect them to have an online presence are also more knowledgeable about investing, said 70 percent of advisors
• Clients also now expect prompt response via social networks (including Facebook and linked in)
• 90 percent of them felt that going forward they need professional support from sites to create an effective social networking presence

The survey builds on our recent post about financial advisors on the site and their varied social networking presences. RIAs with over $4bn under management are already on Covestor and we are continuing to add 5-10 each month.

If you are an Advisor and want to find out more about joining the service we can help you build your social presence. As potential clients increasingly use sites like Covestor to put together their investments, we are likely to look back in a few years and wander how Investment Management worked any other way.

Covestor Will Give New Clients iPads(TM)

Incentive Features The Latest Apple® Innovation, Citing Similar Goals Of Making Life Easier For Today's Investor

NEW YORK, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Drawing a direct correlation between the way the Apple iPad is expected to lead the evolution of Internet use and the way its own service is leading the evolution of investment management for the everyday investor, Covestor announced that it will give the much-anticipated new devices to clients who sign up for the Covestor Investment Management service, effective immediately. (read more)

      Qualification Procedures

1. Complete the three-step Covestor client application here: https://cv.im/open-account/new
    
2. Within 48 hours you will receive an invitation link to open a Covestor-linked brokerage account at Interactive Brokers. You must wait for this invitation link from us. Please do not fill out a standard Interactive Brokers application directly on the Interactive Brokers website. 
3. Complete the Covestor-linked Interactive Brokers application and fund the account with at least $30,000 (Required Minimum).  Note: Covestor has a $10,000 account minimum, but funding must be at least the Required Minimum to qualify for the iPad incentive.
4. Participants have 60 days from the completion of their Interactive Brokers application to fund their accounts.
5. After you’ve funded your account, email ipad@covestor.com with “iPad” in the subject line and your Interactive Brokers account number in the body so we can confirm that you have funded your account.  Qualification will be on a first-come basis as determined by the receiving email time-stamp at Covestor. 

Terms & Conditions 

1. Qualifying clients will receive an Apple iPad (16 GB Wi-Fi only versions, retail value of $499).
2. New account holders will have to keep their account open and funded with $30,000 or greater for at least 6 months from the date of account funding.
3. Accounts closed or fund withdrawals below the required minimum will be assessed a $499 fee at Covestor’s discretion.
4. Account fluctuations due to market performance will not be assessed the $499 fee.
5. Product fulfillment will be via the Apple website and shipment will be direct to our clients at our discretion and subject to availability. 
6. Covestor reserves the right to substitute cash payment of $499 within a reasonable time limit at our discretion.
7. Covestor employees or related third-parties are ineligible. This incentive will run until August 31, 2010. This offer may be extended or discontinued at the discretion of Covestor. All related announcements will be posted to this website. Limit one per household. Not to be combined with other offers.
   
8. Apple® and iPad™ are registered trademarks of Apple Inc.

Job Opportunity - Senior Front End Engineer - London

We are looking for an exceptional senior front end software engineer to join our development team. If you hate average websites, have a designer's taste and a developer's skills, get a kick from building a site that users love then you can make a telling difference at Covestor. If you are tired, jaded, cynical or political then please do not apply.

Role. You will be:

• a Senior Front End Engineer at covestor.com (Central London, UK) reporting to the CTO.
• in a full time office based role to help Covestor deliver its software projects to a high quality level.
• taking responsibility for the public covestor.com site, its evolution in terms of both user experience and efficient underlying implementation
• creating prototypes as part of the process of defining requirements
• reviewing design and code produced by your development colleagues 
• a co-owner of the design and code base, suggesting and implementing ways to improve it.
• cooperating closely with all stakeholders (product management, project management, QA, Systems and 3rd parties) to ensure scope is understood, design is sound and deadlines met.

Experience. You have:

• 4+ years of industry gained development experience with a track record of delivery of high quality software products. Some of that experience is at a start-up (or start-up like) and some more of it at a public facing web site. We want to see your sites!
• HTML, CSS, Javascript , JQuery and ideally (but not essentially) ColdFusion
• a strong understanding of fundamental computer science. Expertise in application design and how to keep it simple even as requirements grow. 
• expert web testing and troubleshooting skills and a familiarity with tools such as Selenium.
• evidence of a record of innovation and unconventional thinking showing that you have worked smarter not just harder.
• excellent organizational, communication and soft skills.
• experience in a light-weight, rapid turnaround engineering environment.
• a strong academic record, a graduate in a science or technology subject, post-graduate is a plus.

Personal Attributes. You are a:

• passionate advocate of concise and simple code, designs and applications.
• technical leader, a person that inspires trust and confidence in your peers. 
• great team member – has the confidence to admit errors, can follow as well as direct and learn as well as teach.
• person who thrives in a fast paced, high energy and relatively unstructured environment.
• You can:
• hold your own in a detailed Javascript discussion with a top programmer and in a user centred design discussion with product experts.
• demonstrate a strong sense of personal integrity and accountability.
• accept and act upon constructive criticism.

What to do Next

Covestor are seeking only passionate, energetic and ambitious individuals with the relevant experience, eligible to work in the UK and able to attend interviews in London.

Send your CV to jobs0710@covestor.com.

Please do not apply if you are not eligible to work in the UK or unable to attend an interview in London. No agencies please.

Job Opportunity - Core Engineer - London

If you are an exceptional software developer, thrive in the fast-paced agile environment of a startup as well as smart, technically creative and enjoy learning, then you will love working at Covestor!

Role

• Core applications developer at Covestor.com (Central London, UK). 
• A full time office based role to help Covestor deliver its software projects to a high quality level.
• Design, build and test processes for: our internal back end processes (e.g. performance calculation, feed handlers), our web sites and integration with vendor provided systems. 
• Work closely with the existing engineers and project manager to ensure deadlines are met.
• Suggest and implement ways to improve the structure of our code base.
• Take ownership of back end bugs / enhancements where necessary and see them through to a resolution.

Experience / Skills

Our technology stack is Java (including Groovy), Linux, Apache and Postgres.

• Ideally 2+ years of industry gained development experience with a record of delivery of high quality software but exceptional technology graduates will be considered 
• Expert Java design and coding technical knowledge in a *nix environment.
• Good data modelling and expert SQL skills – though need not be Postgres specific.
• Excellent testing and troubleshooting skills.
• Experience in a light-weight, rapid turnaround engineering environment.
• BS / MS in Computer Science.

Optionally and advantageously:

• Understanding of systems administrator skills in a typical *nix environment:
• Familiar with TCP/IP networking
• RPM or DEB based distros
• Apache and DB server admin
• Experience with front end technologies such as Javascript, HTML and CSS.

Personal Attributes

• Passion for concise, clear and elegant code.
• Enjoys technology and keeps up to date with the latest innovations.
• Good oral and written communication skills.
• A great team member – someone who enjoys learning and can teach.
• Can handle being outside of comfort zone.
• A self starter, able to make progress without being micro managed.
• Can accept and act upon constructive criticism.

What to do Next

Covestor are seeking only passionate, energetic and ambitious individuals with the relevant experience, eligible to work in the UK and able to attend interviews in London.

Send your CV to jobs0409@covestor.com.

Please do not apply if you are not eligible to work in the UK or unable to attend an interview in London. No agencies please.

Summer Special: No Management Fees for 2 Months

With the start of summer, and our new website, we are feeling warm and fuzzy at Covestor so we are waiving our own management fees for all new Mirroring Accounts funded by the end of July!

What this means is that you can open an account today, mirror the investments of as many managers as you choose, and the only fees you will pay are transaction fees or other charges levied by Interactive Brokers.

We will continue compensating the model managers, and although our management fees will still appear on your order confirmations they won't be on your monthly bill.

It is a great way to give Covestor a try! We don't charge anything for opening or closing your account, and you can be all set up ready to go within 24 hours. Go on, you know you want to...

Job Opportunity - Head of PR and Social Media, New York

We are looking for a super smart, enthusiastic go getter who lives online to build Covestor's public presence, both in mainstream media and across the web. You will be responsible for all day to day PR and social media activity including:

• Building distribution of, and traffic to, Covestor.com
• Ownership of PR and social media strategy and planning
• Internal project management for regular news delivery
• Developing our existing presences such as our blog, twitter channel, LinkedIn

This is a full time role based in our offices in New York, reporting to the CEO and Chief Marketing Officer.  Click here for the complete Job Description.

About you

This position is ideally suited for someone who is passionate about building an online brand, and in shaping the direction of a highly innovative financial service. We are looking for a great communicator to be responsible for all Media activity and public communications. A personal social media presence (blog, Twitter profile etc) is a requirement.

As the key member of a small team you will want to grow a major financial services company from the ground up. The right candidate will be self motivated, have a great working knowledge of  PR and  social networks, and have proven experience in getting things done.

Covestor is changing the landscape in one of the world’s largest industries. Experience of financial services or financial marketing is not needed; rather we are looking for a smart communication specialist, passionate about new media looking to tell our story to the world.

Applications

You can find out more about us on the site.  If you are smart, detail oriented and have proven written english skills and think you have what it takes, we'd love to hear from you.  Send us your resume and current salary to job2054 at covestor dot com

No agencies please. Only open to individuals eligible to work in the US.

Financial Advisors Using Social Media

 Interesting new research out this week on Financial Advisors and their use of New Media. Unsurprisingly it shows that a growing use of the major social networks both for research and marketing. As referenced on the Socialware Blog, highlights of the study from American Century Investments include:

• 44% of advisors who use social media for business or business and personal use agree that social media is an emerging trend with significant potential for businesses like theirs.
• 73% of the participants have a profile or account with one or more of the social media types mentioned (i.e. Facebook and LinkedIn).
• Of those who use social media for business purposes, almost one-fifth (19%) do so daily – either once a day or multiple times a day.

Our experience at Covestor has been very similar. Advisors confidence marketing themselves online is growing, and they are increasingly looking for great tools to build their profiles. As clients also begin to shop online for the best advisory services those without a web presence risk being left behind.

Of the 23 models now available on the site from RIAs, ranging from the small to the very large, almost all have profiles across social networks led by their Covestor profiles. A number are notably already highly connected:

• Navellier: Company blog, Twitter and Facebook
• Epic Advisors: Blog and Seeking Alpha
• Braver Wealth: Seeking Alpha
  
• Sipco: Facebook
  
• YH & C Investments: Seeking Alpha and LinkedIn

This trend shows no sign of abating. Given the social networking tools and transparency on offer, platforms like Covestor are playing an increasingly significant role for Investment Managers in managing and growing their businesses.