Projects / Aberdeen CRIMS Trading Platform
[Aberdeen CRIMS Trading Platform]
At the core of Aberdeen Standard Investments' trading operations sat CRIMS — the Charles River Investment Management System — a mission-critical platform used by investment directors to manage trades across equities, OTC derivatives, FX, fixed income, ETFs, and other instruments. I was responsible for the complete technical operation of this platform: cluster administration, infrastructure stability, upgrade management, performance tuning, integration oversight, disaster recovery, and 24/7 production support for the trading desk.
Live Demo ↗Source Code
Role
IT Senior Specialist & Technical Lead
Project Hero Screenshot / Demo Video
System Architecture Diagram
✓
CRIMS cluster administration & upgrades
✓
Trade settlement message queue monitoring
✓
Overnight batch process automation & recovery
✓
Bloomberg & FactSet market data integration
✓
Compliance and risk calculation oversight
✓
Disaster recovery planning & execution
Dashboard
Alert Config
Analytics
Mobile
Tech Stack
PlatformCharles River IMS (CRIMS)
IntegrationMessaging Queues, Secure File Transfer
Back OfficeCITI Custody
Market DataBloomberg, FactSet, Markit EDM
SchedulingEnterprise Work Schedulers
OtherJava, Perl, Mainframe
Challenges
•Zero-tolerance for trading-day downtime — platform unavailability directly impacts fund performance
•Managing complex message queue flows between CRIMS and CITI back-office — stuck messages mean unsettled trades
•Overnight batch window of fixed duration: all reconciliation, compliance, and risk calculations must complete before market open
•Coordinating across CITI (custodian), Bloomberg, FactSet, Markit EDM, and mainframe feeds within a single nightly cycle