analyst

senior developer

senior software engineer

software engineer

director

Intercontinental Exchange

This position is ran by poor management, and there has been a considerably high turnover rate due to their lack of team development initiatives and inconsistent policies. 
Management will change a policy, like the schedules for the employees, and not really give a true reason why. It is as if management doesn't tell the truth to the employees, and keeps things to themselves just to fit their own agendas/agendas of others.
Management will target certain employees in the Ops team for mistakes and bad practices, while not addressing the inadequacies seen in the team as a whole. One member could be a senior, who has been working for so long with bad habits/negligent practices and not get any scolding/reprimand, while a junior analyst would get scolded/ridiculed even when they learned everything from the senior analyst. Some senior analysts are not true leaders, as they would cover themselves while letting the juniors get fried by their direct managers. There are even managers that know this, as they have favorites in the team and allow exceptions for them, like wearing gym clothes to work, but expect you to wear the proper attire MANDATED by HR Dress Code Policy. 
Management has pure favoritism, and does not put the needs of other people on the table over a senior that has been there for them for many years. Management also is not interested in any of your endeavors, as they expect you to stay and deal with their bad practices for years just by giving you more money. If you desire to have a resource, such as a work-from-home laptop, they will lie and say it isn't in the budget, even though the company makes millions of dollars per year.
The work-from-home policy is a joke, and they didn't take it seriously and in due time removed the program due to poor direction.
Also, certain managers are very disrespectful, and has cursed-off certain employees, including me, for mistakes in the office, like whipping children in the bedroom. When bringing such actions up to their boss, their boss simply disregards it and immediately sides with your manager, so you can forget getting any fair trials in the team. Management appoints management positions to people that are not fit to be leaders, and the pure nepotism/favoritism shows as clear as crystal in this Ops team. 
Management makes everything to be a joke if you have a concern, as they expect you to have a full resolution to fix it when escalated, even though it is THEIR jobs to rectify the issue. 
Management treats every individual that signs on the team to be exceptional, when the reality is that everyone learns differently and at different paces. If you are struggling and need extra assistance, then you can forget that as they will treat you like you are inferior. If you need training, extra resources, or more time to understand something, you can forget that too as they expect you to grow infinitely without providing any resources for you to succeed. Unless you are exceptional, management will lie to you and set you up for failure; especially if they do not like you. Management will state that you can take your time, but then expect you to have senior knowledge in two years time. They don't outline clear expectations for the present, but can talk all day about what they want you to ultimately be, as if they don't need to be a part of the process. 
Also one last thing, you can forget about getting personal life balance resolved, as management will make exceptions for senior analysts while punishing you for breaking policies by mistake, even when the senior is openly doing that on the daily intentionally. 
My direct supervisor was a pure bully, and made my work environment toxic. I cannot speak for everyone else, but he complains about his traffic commute almost daily, and comes in with a nasty attitude if you made a mistake even in the slightest. He expected me to do the work of a senior, while allowing the actual senior analysts to skate by doing less work for more pay. I have escalated these things some seniors would do, and he would disregard it and not pay attention to them, even though THEY are the problem of why certain habits never go away. He also generated projects that served little to no value for the employee growth; not a good project manager. He was a terrible manager who never represented me, and I was not happy working under him and the other managers. Thus, I resigned to bring my life back into balance. 
The Ops team may be doing well now, but at this rate management will crash and burn, leaving only the "leaders" on the ship wreck remains with no SOS.

I write this because everyone deserves to know the truth before signing onto a team.

Nothing really negative to say about ICE, my criticisms are probably more related to position I was in.

Systems Operations is a highly stressful, very fast paced, thankless part of the company.  Think level 2 help desk, system administration, and project managent all rolled into one without the 2 additional paychecks.  If something breaks, you're the first to be blamed, the only one to fix it and you still have to ask permission to do anything.  There is an initial hurdle for less technically experienced persons to perform the duties of the job well but after 6 months, you will have mastered the art.  You will be bored after that unless you just want a job that doesn't require you to learn anything new.  In fact, Ops is in a constant state of change to automate and "dumb" down procedures and tools in order to eliminate the human errors that occur.  

Schedules were akin to working in a restaurant.  Shifts, weekend work, and for some, phone calls at any hour of the day/night.  My particular department's schedule was similar to throwing a dart every 2 weeks to determine who was working when.  Other Ops depts had more reasonable schedules planned out.  

Management was always available and knowledgeable about their respective departments.  

No remote work  (with obvious exceptions if you're on call).  Company policy.

Nicely remodeled office.  Subsidized cafe with good healthy food.  Cubicle farm, lots of them empty.  $600 office chairs for all but extremely uncomfortable.  Dr advised me to replace but that's against company policy.  

ICE promotes from within but depending on your career path, there might not be opportunities.  

Overall, a positive experience but just like any place, it has it's negatives.

ICE is a place with lots of very intelligent people who come from all backgrounds of business. I do think that some of the work is necessary and beneficial. ICE is known to run extremely lean and will do layoffs and let people go and have people work to make up for it, creating a heavier work-load balance. 

Promotions are few and far between with minimal raises (less than inflation). If you want to move up fast in your career, this is NOT the place. Bonus compensation is nice, and the stock-buying is a great benefit. Some awesome managers work here who are supportive and kind.

Culture is horrendous. Nothing they say is true and they back-track on their word. 5-day policy is absurd and was definitely implemented to get people to quit. They promised it would be no more than 3 but quickly that went away. So many people were hired remote and have to travel unrealistically/move to go to a job that does not provide any added benefit for going in office. A poor raise then asking people to put more miles on their cars and then pay extra for child-care? It’s backwards and makes no sense. They want you to embrace change but can’t look in the mirror that the work environment/culture has changed to a hybrid lifestyle. We’ve had a lot of trouble trying to get new quality employees since implementing this policy. It is a punishment to workers who are high performing and trustworthy. Never mind that they watch everyone like a hawk.

At ICE, a typical day involved stand-ups, sprint planning, and building automation frameworks using Python and Pydantic. I collaborated with cross-functional teams to enhance product quality and efficiency. The work environment encouraged ownership, learning, and innovation. Management was supportive and recognized technical contributions.

I learned advanced testing methodologies, data validation techniques, and how to optimize test strategies for financial products. The hardest part of the job was aligning rapid development with strict compliance and quality standards. The most enjoyable part was working on meaningful projects that directly impacted real-time trading systems.

Operations Supervisor with 8 years of increasingly responsible positions in the financial services industry and expertise in managing a staff of up to 45 team members on the trading floor. Highly effective at maintaining a smooth market flow during openings, closings, post close and under variable market conditions. Known for ability to defuse and resolve conflicts in a professional manner while remaining calm, despite a change-intensive work environment. Strong leadership skills in training, motivating and overseeing a staff to assure efficiency, speed and accuracy in all trading markets. Successful track record for monitoring and providing proper functioning of a variety of market data services, including CQG, Reuters, and SDS Market Watch, as well as proprietary systems, bells, buzzers, time displays, microphones, wireless systems and handheld devices.

	Collaborated with team in Market Price Validation (MPV), a service offering consensus based method of valuing long dated and difficult to value financial products in several different markets for more than 35 of the largest financial companies in the world
	Valued and validated over 100 products bi-monthly, providing returns to participants of the MPV service the same day 
	Settled a variety of commodity options on a daily basis, mainly focusing on Gasoil, Brent, WTI for both American and European option styles
	Visited existing customers and met with potential customers in order to better explain the MPV service, our process of validation, as well as other aspects of products and services that the Intercontinental Exchange offered
	Updated and maintained the website for the MPV service 
	Constructed the templates used for participants to upload their prices for over 500 different products to the MPV website


As the company has matured, the cost-cutting has become more aggressive.  While one is unlikely to ever find an organization with a more talented workforce, it comes with many costs.  

The constant threat of being fired,  the recent elimination of stock grants so most employees took a massive pay cut, long hours, zero work-life balance, but aside from that you get free coffee and soda.  Senior people are being cleared out for no reason other than to hire junior people at below market rates and undercut salaries. 

It's a crucible, not for the faint of heart.  The starting salary is attractive, but the longer one works there, the worse it is for the advancement of your career.  Most of the managers exhibit blatant favoritism and discrimination in project assignments and thus promotions, so if you're not in the favored group, you have zero chance of advancement.

I actually enjoy my day-to-day work and my manager, but the higher-level direction often feels poor, which makes it hard to feel a sense of accomplishment. There are good opportunities to work with interesting tools and collaborate experienced colleagues.

Compensation feels below market for my role. Benefits seem fairly standard to slightly above average. The company also seems uncomfortable with remote work, which makes me feel less supported.

Most team managers are good, but leadership above that level felt increasingly disconnected from day-to-day work. Integration after acquisitions can be frustrating, and the culture can feel uneven for people who came in through those acquisitions.

Processes and procedures seem to change frequently, and the bureaucracy can be exhausting.

I learned a lot about CDS trading and the clearing business while working at ICE. The atmosphere was a bit hurried as releases came every often and driven by reporting laws.The technology for regression and functional testing that was employed was FITNESSE. It was a bit cumbersome and not a great automation tool. The documentation describing the regulations governing the reporting of trades and collateral requirements was lacking in completeness.  

The work place environment was overall conducive to manage a good life work balance. There were a few late nights and weekend work that was needed to satisfy release requirements that were mandated by sanctioning governmental agencies.

Working for ICE is horrible. They constantly buy new companies and then consolidate, which ends up leading to a ton of layoffs. They offer no job advancement, just lateral movement within the company, which isn't very easy since most managers will try to stop you from leaving their team. Most managers and directors have no clue what they're doing and just have their employees do all the work for them and take all the credit. The company is poorly run and they don't compensate much, but expect you to work way more than youre paid to do. You also only start with 10 vacation days per year until youve veen with them for 5 years.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Analyst 26 salaries reported	$89,408 per year
Senior developer 27 salaries reported	$165,528 per year
Senior software engineer 4 salaries reported	$126,500 per year
Software engineer 12 salaries reported	$104,083 per year
Director 11 salaries reported	$232,727 per year

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