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I'm at a crossroads for my career choice again, and would appreciate some advice.I have a secured offer to work for Murex in Paris for a year via a consultancy (all expenses paid) as a FO Business Analyst, supporting clients. My reservations about the Murex role are firstly that being British, I would rather stay in London. More importantly, hardly any i-bank offers job security right now, but on the other hand I am uncertain about the long-term prospects of working for Murex. Sure Murex contracting rates have been historically high but I see few new installations of Murex in London, and the next 10 years of Murex will not be as lucrative as the last 10 years (more people know Murex).My alternative is to seek a role as a RAD/Desk developer, or more likely a Business Analyst at a bank.My experience is 3 years of front-office Business Analysis work in banks, on Murex (2 years) and an in-house system (1 year). I have also been a developer for 1.5 years in VBA/6 and Java over my career but not as a RAD/Desk developer at a bank. My most recent role was a 1 year mid-level Murex BA where I have had to code using it's FO pricing module (E-tradePad) using its propriety programming language. So I have experience of working with the desks and doing RAD type work to encapsulate structured products on the rates and credit derivatives sides. Murex still role out notes on their development (see below) but it is hard for me to gauge how far behind the curve they are on their analytics. Are they doing anything in any asset class that people think is worthwhile on the FO side which is catching they eye of financial services firms. Obviously, I'm looking for where to try to position myself within Murex.As well as thoughts about my personal position I'd like to hear about people's experiences of Murex, and whether their firms have looked at using it or not lately? How is the regulatory climate affecting vendor trading systems? http://www.risk.net/risk-magazine/adver ... t-murexPDF version: http://www.risk.net/digital_assets/3503 ... .pdfThanks.

One of the dangers of working at a place like Murex is that with each year that goes by, you get more and more specialized in their system, making it less possible for you to move to another job (except for supporting Murex at a client or implementation consultant). Other than that, everyone I know who works at one of these vendors seems to be much happier than the people I know who work at banks.

Having worked with MSL in the epad or STB, what is your confidence in the quality of the software, given this part is 8yrs+ matured? Have you ever worked with the 15yrs+ old parts? Have you elaborated on the "younger" parts?I see it this way: software that always works as expected, or delivers what is promised, doesn't save us our jobs...