I’ve always been interested in engineering; anything that had a chip in it, I broke to rebuild. I remember taking household items apart—remotes, lightbulbs, stereos, flip phones—to see what was inside them. I was also a straight-A student, and in almost every Nigerian home this meant you had to be a doctor, so I spent a lot of my childhood convincing myself that I would make a great pediatrician. In high school, though, I realized I had no interest in biology. I took a computer science class in my penultimate year of school where I learned programming for the first time in GW BASIC, and the rest is history!
I applied to the Africa Recruiting Initiative (ARI) in my final year of university. I had been to recruiting events in the past where companies sold exclusivity as the prize. With Goldman, it felt different. We met engineers and learned about the organization’s flat structure – a unique aspect of the culture I hadn’t seen anywhere else. I left the event feeling inspired to start my career at a firm that valued excellence, culture and community. Two years later as a full-time analyst, I find that this remains true. Being an engineer at Goldman Sachs is a unique experience – the technical caliber at the firm is outstanding and the culture reinforces ownership while providing tutelage, mentorship and opportunities for learning and growth through one’s career.
I sit on the Inventory Management Engineering team, which is a part of the firm’s Equities Financing initiative. We develop a range of critical applications dealing with the allocation of cash and securities collateral across all available trades and facilities, as well as the creation of funding capacity and optimal deployment of funding across all available opportunities. Our flagship product is a new, innovative, re-implementation of the Inventory Management software stack. It leverages operational research algorithms to optimally manage the firm’s cash and securities inventory. This new software stack enables us to reduce unencumbered balances at the firm, thereby significantly reducing the firm's interest expenses.
Through ARI, I was introduced to the Black Engineers (BE) Network – one of the many inclusion networks at the firm. I currently volunteer for the network’s recruiting pillar, through which I organize networking and technical training sessions for ARI interns and campus hires when they join the firm. My involvement now in ARI has been an incredible opportunity to learn, grow and make an impact globally. The best thing about ARI is the community it provided me with – joining the program with a group of people with whom I shared experiences helped ease me into a new country and lifestyle. My work with the BE Network allows me to pay this forward to incoming ARI students, and this is so rewarding!