DCU Voices

DCU VOICES 24 While Sinéad Strain is now a prominent woman in tech, working as the head of global markets trading platform and the ‘Marquee’ digital storefront at Goldman Sachs, she originally thought she was destined for a career in accountancy. “I liked maths and my parents were very practical, so I thought I needed to study something that led to a good job,” she recalls. However, when she attended an open day at DCU and sat in on a computer applications session, she realised that was where her true passion lay. “The act of sitting in that session during the DCU open day inspired me to think about this as an option. I still had accounting in my list of preferences, but when computer applications at DCU came up I jumped at it. It was an easy choice to make and I’m very glad that I did.” She says it was good luck that she ended up sitting in on that open day session. “This was not part of my original plan and that has been a trend in my life. Life presented opportunities along the way and I was happy to take a chance. I’ve never had a grand plan in life. I’m still figuring that out.” Her own experience means she emphasises the value of letting opportunities lead the way. “I think it is OK not to have your career path fully figured out and take some risks as new opportunities come along. Many of my choices were not by design but resulted in fun career and life highlights.” Problem solving Through her course in DCU, Sinéad secured an INTRA internship at Microsoft. This gave her amazing experience with technology, but it also helped her realise she wanted to work with companies that had business problems that she could solve with technology instead of coming up with software ideas. So, after graduating from DCU, Sinéad joined multinational IT company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), where she worked with a few client accounts. “I was in the UK working for one of these clients when I saw that JP Morgan was recruiting in London,” she says. “I did not know anything about the financial services industry, but I had heard that they were investing a lot in technology, so I decided to try it out.” Sinéad worked there for five years before an opportunity brought her to New York. She decided to stay. In 2005, she moved from JP Morgan to Goldman Sachs, where she has worked in several different roles. “I started in interest rate technology, and moved to run FX technology in 2008 right before the financial crisis,” she says. “I expanded my role to run fixed income, currencies and commodities technology in 2014. Over the past few years, I was asked to lead Marquee engineering in addition to global markets trading platform engineering.” Sinéad’s current role involves running a global organisation that develops software solutions for external clients and internal trading desks. Opening doors for women in tech Goldman Sachs partner Sinéad Strain speaks to Jenny Darmody about her career, serving as part of the Women in Engineering network for the group and bringing more women into computing and technology through the Anita Borg Institute in New York City. Jenny Darmody (BA Journalism, 2013); Deputy Editor at Silicon Republic