Head of Product Development

Name: Antonello Cirulli
Age: 34
Degree: MSc UZH ETH Quantitative Finance
Profession: Head of Product Development
Employer: OLZ AG

Describe your job in one sentence.

Coordinate the development and maintenance of all investment models, from the design with the client to the regular delivery of the investment strategy, with a special focus on structuring solid automated production processes.

What are the three main tasks in your job?

• Supervising and automating the regular rebalancing of the investment strategies
• Increasing the product offering with new strategies based on the results from the research team and requirements from sales
• Keep a strong research network and acquire more know-how in the investment world

What do you think is the best / most exciting thing about this job?

Having the chance to bridge the gap between cutting hedge research and client needs

What is the biggest challenge in this job?

Needing to bridge the gap between sales oriented colleagues and risk, IT and operations oriented colleagues.

What do you need to enter this profession or to be successful in it?

In terms of hard skills, a strong background in finance, math and coding. In terms of soft skills, creativity, patience and ability to quickly adapt to changing short term needs without losing the long term goals.

What promotion/further development opportunities are there?

From the career point of view, being in a medium sized asset manager advancement can happen becoming a partner and participating in the growth of the company.
From the personal point of view, advancement is more of a need than an opportunity as in this field to stand still is to fall behind.

What would you have liked to have known about this profession as a graduate?

That contact to clients is extremely important even for technical profiles.

What advice do you have for students who are interested in this job?

When searching for a job don't just look for open positions as there are not that many. See who does something interesting and ask even if there is no opening.

In terms of your career, is there anything you would do differently looking back? Why?

Partly because of skill and a lot because of luck, I would redo everything the same way.

Is there anything else you would like to pass on to current students?

I would advise to focus on creating rather than consuming. Even creating useless things is good, and you never know when something useless proves to be useful.

As of March 2025