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Erik Gordon Named Top 10 Most Inspirational CTOs of 2021

“Leading with Persistence & Integrity”

Erik Gordon is a prized mathematician passionate about pioneering emerging technologies to grow Trillium Labs’ solutions in big data analytics, high performance / low latency computing, distributed systems, and anomaly detection. A visionary, Erik has leveraged his experience across companies of many sizes and industries to establish a clear strategic direction and mission for Trillium Labs and provide accurate, intuitive solutions for a varied customer base in an ever-evolving market. He is a skilled communicator who can convey complex messages to clients and stakeholders, building his reputation as a trustworthy thought leader. In addition to his great instincts, Erik has a winning management style. Erik knows that an organization’s most valuable asset is its people. With people as his guiding light, Erik has invested in building a culture at Trillium Labs where employees feel a sense of security that empowers them to think big and collaborate with colleagues. He has established a well-known and well-utilized open-door policy. He has continuous engagement with every team member, creating space for innovation, providing guidance for challenges, and acting as a sounding board for personal growth and development.

From a very young age, it was clear that Erik was destined for a career in technology. Erik’s biggest inspiration, his father, identified his talent early on and taught him to patiently and persistently approach and solve complicated problems. Erik’s father also sought every opportunity to support his son’s developing coding skills, from gifting him a Commodore VIC-20 at the age of 9 to dropping him off at school early to take advantage of the computer lab before the official day started. Erik’s father’s core value of remaining calm and steady during complex challenges instilled in Erik the importance of resiliency, tenacity, and integrity as he grew into leadership and strategic roles where teams relied on him.

After decades of industry experience, Erik knows that the most challenging part of being a leader is building a world-class team, while the easiest part is letting that team go off and produce ground-breaking technology. Because of this knowledge, Erik has pragmatically grown a team of disruptive, innovative engineers to ensure that Trillium Labs remains at the forefront of the industry. Further, Erik mentors his team, inspiring people by purposefully investing in relationships and sharing his own experiences and expertise.

“Trillium Labs’ flagship product, Surveyor, set out to define the next generation of trade surveillance software.”

This steadfast leader is committed to staying on top of emerging technologies and embracing technological advancements to better its products. For example, Trillium Labs aggressively moved into cloud computing well ahead of its competitors to capitalize on the scalability and agility that the platform provides while also allowing the organization to shed the support burden of traditional bare-metal hardware. By leveraging AWS auto-scaling, Trillium Labs’ technology is in a position of strength as new data services are enabled, and data demands of trading continue to hit new highs. Through their analysis of new techniques and trends, Erik and his supporting technologists had the foresight to implement a robust, state-of-the-art technical architecture leveraging cloud computing.

Trillium Labs’ flagship product, Surveyor, set out to define the next generation of trade surveillance software. Until Surveyor, the trade surveillance space was dominated by a few legacy pieces of software that were sorely behind the times and not sufficiently meeting customers’ needs. After taking the time and resources to work with an award-winning software design firm, Surveyor’s customers now benefit from using a modern, intuitive piece of software that easily handles the scale and complexity of modern-day trading. Surveyor allows compliance teams to spot manipulative behavior easily, and users can proactively deal with anything that may lead to unwanted regulatory attention. For example, one Surveyor client was able to review flagged nefarious behavior and eliminate a rogue trader well before it escalated into a regulatory matter. By proactively remediating the misconduct, Surveyor enabled the client to act as a steward of the marketplace by providing the data needed to satisfy the regulators’ inquiries and avoid penalties. “These tools ensured that our customers were proactively monitoring for the observed behavior when the risks emerged, ahead of formal regulation,” says Erik.

Trillium Labs as a whole is currently undergoing a very exciting growth phase. “This growth will allow us to scale our internal processes and protocols and deliver even more technology that will directly benefit our customers,” says Erik. “We are looking to expand beyond the compliance trade surveillance space to ensure our customers have a comprehensive tool kit to accommodate their diverse business needs.” IE