Michael Ackley
Software Engineer at Watershed Tech
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Ackley is a Chicago-based software engineer with 12 years building high-performance, low-latency systems for financial markets, from retail trading at thinkorswim to institutional FIX-driven infrastructure. He specializes in FIX protocol engineering, real-time data services and back-end systems, and has a strong track record contributing to notable open-source projects like the Go FIX library and Marketstore (a DataFrame server for financial time series). As a polyglot developer and former senior architect, he combines hands-on coding with architectural thinking to improve performance, usability, and reliability in production trading environments. Michael’s finance degree and early market-data work give him domain fluency that complements his technical depth, and his contributions often focus on toolability—CLI improvements, session management, and robust configuration—to make complex systems easier to operate.
12 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree Finance, Bachelor's degree Finance at Michigan State University
French
Github Skills (22)
financial-data10
data-set10
testing10
command-line-interface10
data-exchange10
data-model10
go10
user-data10
command-line10
financial-markets10
database-management10
cli10
net9
configuration-management9
golang9
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
piquette/finance-go
Mar 2018 - Apr 2021
:bar_chart: Financial markets data library implemented in go.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 1 review, 27 commits in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to building the financial markets data library implemented in Go. Their work focused on completing the implementation of various quote types for different financial instruments like equities, ETFs, mutual funds, indexes, options, futures, and forex pairs. They also worked on historical data, including chart functionality, and updated testing utilities to support the library's functionality. These contributions indicate an effort to enhance the library's capability to provide comprehensive financial market data.
gofinancefinancial-datafinancial-marketsgo-library
quickfixgo/quickfix
Sep 2019 - Jan 2023
The Go FIX Protocol Library :rocket:
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:11 releases, 4 reviews, 51 commits in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on enhancing the Go FIX Protocol Library by upgrading Go versions, migrating to modules, and adding configuration parameters. They introduced and modified several files related to session management, testing, and configuration, demonstrating a strong understanding of the library's core functionalities. The contributions included incorporating new features like LogonTimeout and LogoutTimeout, as well as correcting linter issues.
fixprotocolgoquickfixfinancetrading-systems
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