Schalk Pienaar

About

Hi, I’m Schalk.

I’m an engineering leader and software architect. Most of my career has been spent on the platforms that trading desks, portfolio managers and banks run on every day.

I started out writing web applications while studying Information Systems at the University of Auckland, then spent close to two decades in London building front-office and risk systems at Credit Suisse, Commerzbank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BlueBay and Legal & General Investment Management. Over that time my work moved from hands-on development to leading teams and setting the technical direction for larger programmes.

Since moving back to Auckland I’ve led engineering for a FICC trading platform at Jarden, and I now work on API integration at ASB Bank, where we’re moving the bank’s API platform onto the BIAN standard.

Most of what I care about comes down to building systems that keep working long after launch. In practice that means Clean Architecture and Domain-Driven Design, modernising legacy systems one piece at a time, sound API design, and teams with the standards and habits to look after what they ship. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on how AI tools like Claude Code change the way engineering teams work.

I write here to think out loud and share what’s worked. If something resonates or you see it differently, I’d like to hear about it.

Get in touch on LinkedIn
years building software
20+
banks and asset managers
10
AUM on the largest platform
$1TN+

What I work on

Architecture

  • Clean Architecture
  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Event-driven systems
  • CQRS
  • Microservices
  • TOGAF

APIs & integration

  • OpenAPI
  • AsyncAPI
  • BIAN
  • REST & GraphQL
  • Kafka & messaging
  • Kong Konnect

Platform & delivery

  • .NET & C#
  • AWS & Azure
  • Terraform
  • GitHub & GitOps
  • Observability
  • DORA metrics

Leadership

  • Building teams
  • Mentoring
  • Stakeholder management
  • Agile delivery
  • Risk & compliance
  • AI-assisted engineering

Career

  1. 2026 – Present

    ASB Bank Auckland

    • Technical Consultant, Modern Integration

    Part of the Modern Integration workstream leadership group, moving the bank's API platform from bespoke legacy services to service domains aligned with the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) standard.

    • Designed API schemas for key BIAN service domains, turning logical models into physical specifications that implementation teams could build against
    • Built a trunk-based, semantically versioned workflow for API specifications, plus state-based GitOps deployments with diff plans and production sync
    • Created Claude Code skills for API design, generation and review, changing how the team works and lifting design quality and throughput
    • Introduced agile ceremonies and DORA metrics, championed a team charter and standards, and joined the ASB mentoring and Cultural Champion programmes
    • BIAN
    • OpenAPI
    • AsyncAPI
    • Kong Konnect
    • GitOps
    • Claude Code

  2. 2024 – 2026

    Jarden Auckland

    • Senior Manager, Engineering Lead (FICC)

    Owned a fixed income, currency and commodities trading platform end to end, across technology, product, people and process, reporting to the CIO.

    • Restarted a platform integration programme that had stalled for two years, and migrated the acquired platform into Jarden infrastructure
    • Stabilised client-facing Azure APIs, resolving auth, design and cyber-risk issues, and set out a roadmap for expanding them
    • Built and led a team of four, and established coding standards, documentation, runbooks, structured logging and Datadog observability
    • Moved the codebase from Azure DevOps to GitHub, ran a firm-wide Engineering Leadership Group, and drove adoption of AI tooling
    • .NET
    • Azure
    • Terraform
    • GitHub
    • Datadog

  3. 2023 – 2024

    London to Auckland

    Relocated from London back to Auckland, with several months of travel along the way.

  4. 2020 – 2023

    Legal & General Investment Management London

    • Principal Engineer, Liability Driven InvestmentNov 2022 – Jun 2023
    • Senior Developer, Liability Driven InvestmentNov 2020 – Nov 2022

    Led technical design across four programme workstreams (around 20 developers) on a liability-driven investment platform managing over $1TN in assets.

    • Delivered a flagship cloud-based portfolio event management service built on Clean Architecture, DDD and messaging
    • Wrote the roadmap for moving the monolith to microservices
    • Introduced a Clean Architecture module and attribute-based dependency injection into a legacy monolith, improving testability and delivery speed
    • Moved the team from a legacy Git host to GitHub and a GitFlow branching model
    • .NET
    • AWS
    • Kafka
    • GraphQL
    • PostgreSQL
    • DDD
    • CQRS

  5. 2020

    MBA, Warwick Business School

    Took a sabbatical to complete an MBA with Distinction (Dean’s List), with a dissertation on ESG integration.

  6. 2018 – 2020

    BlueBay Asset Management London

    • Senior Developer, Fixed Income

    Full-stack work on a fixed income portfolio and position management system.

    • Delivered group P&L by strategy, removing a US$400k annual third-party licence
    • Built bulk position hedging, cutting the workflow time by an estimated 90%
    • Added FX exposure adjustment and trade generation, broadening adoption of the application
    • .NET Core
    • SignalR
    • WPF
    • SQL Server

  7. 2015 – 2018

    Commerzbank London

    • Senior / Lead Developer, Equity Derivatives

    Led a small front-end team on an equity derivatives trading platform.

    • Re-architected the trading front end from WinForms to a modular WPF design
    • Delivered 15 configurable structured-notes trade capture screens ahead of a regulatory deadline
    • Built a proof-of-concept ML model to classify legacy trades from their term sheets
    • C#
    • WPF
    • MVVM
    • Python

  8. 2011 – 2015

    Credit Suisse London

    • Senior / Lead Developer, Equities & Prime Finance

    Developer, then team lead, on an equity derivatives position, P&L and risk platform.

    • Removed front-end memory and performance bottlenecks, allowing significant new business onto the platform
    • Added asynchronous batching to pricing, producing risk metrics around 33% faster
    • C#
    • Multi-threading
    • SQL Server

  9. 2009 – 2011

    Bank of America Merrill Lynch London

    • Senior Developer, Commodities Risk

    Intraday position, P&L and risk platform for commodities traders.

    • Designed and delivered Japanese Crude Cocktail trade valuation, opening up new tradable instruments
    • Built a Market on Close report giving traders a clearer view of exposure roll-off
    • C#
    • TDD
    • Oracle

  10. 2008 – 2009

    Calyon Corporate and Investment Bank London

    • Senior Developer, FX

    Client-facing FX trading application.

    • Delivered a credit-checking compliance module for deal execution
    • Built failover and reconnection for pricing and other services
    • C#
    • SOA
    • TDD

  11. 2006 – 2008

    ABN AMRO London

    • Senior Developer, Equity Finance IT

    Front-office equity swap trading platform.

    • Rebuilt messaging for price, instrument, cashflow and risk feeds for better performance and reliability
    • Delivered a configurable, encrypted STP workflow system
    • C#
    • MSMQ
    • SQL Server

  12. 2004 – 2006

    Royal Bank of Scotland London

    • Senior / Lead Developer, Financial Markets Technology Control

    Led a small team building a Sarbanes-Oxley-driven operational risk and access control system.

    • Delivered the access control system along with support tooling that improved uptime
    • ASP.NET
    • C#
    • SQL Server

  13. 2003 – 2004

    ABN AMRO London

    • Senior Developer

    Led the design and build of a greenfield deal management application for internal sales teams.

    • Architecture reviewed by Microsoft consultants and rated as following best practice
    • ASP.NET
    • C#
    • n-tier

  14. 1997 – 2003

    Early career

    Web and application development in Auckland and London while studying and after graduating.

    • Universal Music InternationalBill-of-materials engine for physical media releases2003
    • Real Developments / Lion NathanPlayer management system for the NZRU’s 300,000 members2002 – 2003
    • Ernst & YoungXML-based online financial reporting2001 – 2002
    • University of AucklandCourse management system used by staff and students1999 – 2001
    • travel.co.nzCorporate intranet replacing paper-based workflow1997 – 1999

Education

  • MBA (Distinction, Dean’s List)Warwick Business School · 2019 – 2022
  • MCom (Hons, First Class), Information SystemsUniversity of Auckland · 2000 – 2002
  • BCom, Information Systems & MarketingUniversity of Auckland · 1996 – 2000

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Foundation
  • Certified ScrumMaster

Research

Papers from my postgraduate research on service-oriented architectures and decision support.