Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
Every two years, a selective group of Morgan Stanley's elite technologists open their ranks to welcome a new crop of distinguished engineers.
This month, the existing distinguished engineers at the firm themselves selected their 19 newest members after a rigorous half-a-year vetting process. The group, now made up of 78 employees from across the firm, represents the top 0.3% of technologists at Morgan Stanley.
"Anywhere we're making those core decisions at the center of tech, you can almost guarantee that all or some portion of the DEs are involved in those decision processes," Michael Pizzi, head of US banks and head of technology at Morgan Stanley, told Business Insider.
Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, last month announced its class of 111 technical fellows, representing the top 3% of engineers at the bank. They specialize in specific domains, and are often tapped to work on some of the firm's trickiest technical issues.
Goldman Chief Technology Officer John Madsen remembers assembling an A-team of about 10 technical fellows a few years ago to make upgrades to an important system that was about to max out on its capacity, he said, declining to specify which business the system supported. "These kinds of moments often go unnoticed by the bulk of the firm, but they highlight the exact value this community brings to Goldman Sachs," Madsen told BI.
At JPMorgan, distinguished engineers represent the highest level of engineer, and includes the likes of Marco Pistoia, who leads applied research on cutting-edge technologies like quantum computing, and William Patrick Opet, the bank's global chief information security officer.
Outside of banking, the technical distinction is picking up traction. Ken Griffin's market maker, Citadel Securities, hired its first technical fellow this year, and BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, introduced its inaugural class in 2021.
While it's usually the rainmakers, investors, and traders who take the spotlight on Wall Street, there's a growing group of technologists whose influence is taking center stage as technology is increasingly viewed as a competitive advantage.
Call them distinguished engineers or technical fellows (depending on the firm), they're who bank leaders go to with their thorniest and most challenging technical problems. They also help put into effect and execute the longer-term firm-wide tech strategy set out by C-suites. For many engineers, it's a dream and one of the highest technical designations in the business.
BI spoke with some of the newly minted distinguished engineers, a long-time tech fellow, and the executives running these programs to find out what they do, how they influence the wider tech strategy, and to get an inside look at the vetting process.
Some of the first tech fellows on Wall Street were at Goldman Sachs, whose program dates back to 2004. Miruna Stratan still remembers the call when she was told she had made it.
"I remember I wanted it more than anything," Stratan told BI of the program that celebrates technologists in a way that was historically reserved for rainmakers and business leaders.
Now, she is a top tech exec within Goldman's lucrative investment-banking division and is one of just four partner-level tech fellows at the firm. The distinction is highly sought after by Goldman's technical population, she said, and the bank even hosts presentations to demystify what it means to be a tech fellow.
Part of the allure is being able to show off your technical chops. But being a tech fellow also means you can shape the firm through your engineering solutions, Stratan said.
"The tech fellows at Goldman Sachs have been at the center of all the major business transformations through technology since the program began. From grid compute and virtual desktops to cloud and data lakes, and now, of course, with AI," she said of previous technology waves.
It's a similar story at Morgan Stanley, where distinguished engineers are expected to spend 15% to 20% of their time on enterprise-level problems, not unit-specific problems, Pizzi said. That additional responsibility, which doesn't necessarily come with a raise or promotion, is actually a plus for many engineers in the program.
"We can help to make some firm-wide decisions in technology and make sure we are moving in the right direction," said Ken Zhang, one of Morgan Stanley's newest DEs and one of the brains behind the bank's generative AI tool, AskResearch.
Fang Song, another newly minted Morgan Stanley DE and executive director in the enterprise computing group, referred to her peers as "technical influencers" who make widely impacting decisions on reusable technology blueprints that are used across departments.
At Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, distinguished engineers and technical fellows cannot apply for the designation. They must be nominated by senior management or existing TFs and DEs.
While engineering excellence is at the heart of being a DE and TF, it's not the only thing candidates are judged on.
At Morgan Stanley, Pizzi said contributing to the firm's technical reputation externally is important, whether it involves writing technical books and white papers or holding patents. The bank's DEs hold one third of the patents the bank has generated, he added.
Goldman Sachs judges candidates on how they nurture the broader technology population. Stratan said she remembers and keeps in touch with her mentors, who taught her "how to be a senior engineer and how to think through complex problems."
"A very important piece is mentoring and coaching," Stratan said. "Basically the tech fellows are coaching the next generation of tech talent at the firm."
