Gerard O'Connor is a Distinguished Engineer with over a decade of experience architecting low-latency, event-driven trading and risk systems for major sportsbook and financial platforms. He has led global architecture for Risk & Trading at Flutter and now drives technical strategy for Fanatics Sportsbook, routinely deploying Kafka, Akka, Flink and Kubernetes across AWS and hybrid environments. Gerard blends quantitative trading experience—including CTO and front-office engineering roles at hedge funds—with hands-on software craftsmanship in C#/F# and .NET, demonstrated by notable open-source contributions to projects like Giraffe and Paket. He excels at turning complex financial models into scalable, observable production services and embedding DevOps best practices to manage real-time exposures across global brands. Colleagues describe him as a product-focused technologist who pairs rigorous financial analysis with creative platform design to unlock economies of scale. An uncommon detail: he still contributes to functional-programming tooling (F#) while leading large-scale, mission-critical trading architectures.
10 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Templeogue College
Bachelor's degree, Honours (BFS), Financial Services, Bachelor's degree, Honours (BFS), Financial Services at University College Dublin
JFSD – Joint Financial Services and Business Studies Diploma, Financial Services and Business Studies, JFSD – Joint Financial Services and Business Studies Diploma, Financial Services and Business Studies at Institute of Bankers Ireland
CSIS Level 3 Certificate in Investments (Securities) :, Investments, CSIS Level 3 Certificate in Investments (Securities) :, Investments at Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CSIS)
Professional Member (MBCS), Information Technology, Professional Member (MBCS), Information Technology at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
A native functional ASP.NET Core web framework for F# developers.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:32 commits, 17 PRs, 1 push in 4 months
Contributions summary:Gerard contributed significantly to the Giraffe F# web framework, primarily focusing on improvements to the HTTP handler functionality. Their work involved debugging, updating tests, and refactoring code within the `HttpHandlers.fs` file. The commits demonstrate an understanding of the framework's core components, including middleware, routing, and request processing. Furthermore, the user added a port routing handler, demonstrating the ability to extend framework features.
A dependency manager for .NET with support for NuGet packages and Git repositories.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:13 commits, 1 PR, 12 comments in 1 day
Contributions summary:Gerard focused on optimizing the `ProjectFile.fs` file, a core component of the `Paket` dependency manager. They implemented caching mechanisms to improve performance by reducing redundant project file loading and dependency calculations. The user also addressed code efficiency, including the use of `HashSet` to prevent duplicate project loads. Further contributions included the use of dictionary-based caching strategies and code refactoring.
repositoriesdotnetfsharpmonopackage-manager
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Gerard O'connor - Distinguished Engineer at Fanatics