Senior Fixed Income Market Abuse Specialist

Salary: National ranging from £54,600 – £68,300 and London £60,000 - £75,000, salary offered will be based on skills and experience

Do you have an interest in working with large data sets and have experience in Python?

The team/department

Market Oversight’s mission is to promote conduct that supports trusted, orderly and efficient primary and secondary markets in the UK, which work in the interests of all participants and stakeholders. Market Abuse Enquiries is part of Secondary Market Oversight, which has the primary responsibility for identifying and reviewing instances of potential market abuse and referring the most serious cases to Enforcement.

We are looking for a new team member to join our FICC Market Abuse Team (Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities), specialised in investigating market abuse in FICC markets. While large part of our work derives from market abuse notifications reported to the FCA, our work is increasingly driven by a data-led, proactive approach focusing on those products and markets that are subject to our enhanced regulatory focus.

We are seeking to hire a Senior Associate with relevant experience in Fixed Income markets and products, interest in working with large data sets and basic experience in Python.

The role involves triaging market abuse notifications and managing your own portfolio of casework and projects, as well as developing our analytical capabilities through developing how we analyse and visualise commercial and regulatory data sources using Python.
 

What you will be doing (the role)

Reviewing allegations of market abuse in Fixed Income, conducting your own enquiries and analysis to determine whether cases should be recommended for formal investigation by Enforcement or addressed with alternative, non-investigatory outcomes

Working with FICC specialists in the team to identify and analyse market events and trading of interest or concern in Fixed Income markets

Working with FICC specialists, data scientists and data engineers in our commercial and regulatory data teams to drive the development of FICC visualisation, analytical and surveillance tools using Python

Working with Enforcement on formal Fixed Income market abuse investigations, including gathering and analysing evidence, and providing market technical support and knowledge

Supporting management in decision-making and prioritisation of market abuse notifications

Helping to progress thematic workstreams and/or key areas of responsibility, involving working with other areas of the FCA

What you will get from the role?

This is a varied role in one of the most dynamic areas of the FCA offering an excellent opportunity to play a key role in achieving the FCA’s strategic objective by delivering assertive action on market abuse. On your journey to becoming a FICC case officer, you will be working with, and learning from, FICC specialists who combine significant FICC industry experience with regulatory and market abuse know-how. You will have a unique opportunity to learn from experienced data scientists and data engineers, to grow your basic Python knowledge through self-directed, on-the-job learning with excellent support from Python specialists. You will gain considerable exposure to visualisation tools such as Tableau, Spotfire and One Tick, and together with the team, you will drive the development of FICC surveillance alerts.

Furthermore, you will have exposure to a variety of activities covered by the Secondary Market Oversight department and have opportunities to build relationships with staff across the Market Oversight division and beyond.

Working in Market Abuse Enquiries, you will benefit from:

Exposure to interesting, varied work in a priority area for the FCA with the opportunity to provide Fixed Income technical input and drive our FICC analytical and surveillance capabilities

The opportunity to take responsibility for projects and your own market abuse caseload, making recommendations and decisions to achieve a variety of outcomes

Exposure to a wide range of commercial and regulatory data sets and Fixed Income case work, with the opportunity to work as an Appointed Investigator on formal Enforcement investigations

Working closely with other areas of the FCA

You will have excellent learning, training and personal development opportunities. As an Academy business we place great value on your learning, and we offer development opportunities which will assist you in achieving your career aspirations. Our Academy offers you a range of opportunities for personal and professional development, including our MSC in financial regulation, Advanced Managers programme, sponsored study and more.

Core benefits that you will receive as standard are:

25 days holiday per year plus bank holidays

Private healthcare with Bupa 

A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach age 35)

Life assurance of eight times your basic salary

Income protection

We support hybrid workingwhich means you will be able to work from home up to 60% of the time over a month with the remainder of your time in one of our three office locations.

The skills and experience you will have

We are a signatory to the Government’s Disability Confident scheme. This means that we will offer an interview to disabled candidates entering under the scheme, should they meet the minimum criteria for a role. 

Minimum

Prior experience in Fixed Income gained from front-office, middle-office, risk, surveillance or similar roles

Prior experience of Fixed Income market structure, rates and credit flow products including exchange traded derivatives

Prior experience of basic Python programming language and related libraries such as Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib and proven ability to work on process improvements for multiple process types concurrently

Essential

Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal, with ability to explain complex, technical matters clearly and succinctly to a range of audiences. With the ability to write concise, succinct reports

Ability to prioritise effectively when handling multiple work-streams and tasks

Very strong team player and ability to work productively and collaboratively in a team

Excellent analytical skills and affinity to working with data sets and visualisation tools; good working knowledge of Excel

The ability to make sound, evidence-based judgements and recommendations alongside a flexible and adaptable approach

Self-starter with a proactive approach to acquiring new skills and knowledge and managing own workload

Curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and sharing knowledge and ability to build strong and effective working relationships with colleagues and other stakeholders

Understanding of the UK Market Abuse Regulation (UK MAR)

About the FCA

The FCA regulates the conduct of 50,000 firms in the UK to ensure our financial markets are honest, fair and competitive. We do this to make sure markets work well for individuals, businesses and the economy as a whole. For more information on what we do, our three-year strategy can be found here.

The FCA's Values & Diversity

Our ambition is to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better regulation.

The FCA is committed to achieving greater diversity across all levels of the organisations. Given this, we particularly welcome applications from women, disabled and minority ethnic candidates for our Senior Associate role.

Flexible working

We welcome applications from candidates who are looking for flexible arrangements. Many of our staff work flexibly including working part-time, staggered hours, and job shares. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want but we won’t judge you for asking.

Multi-location

As part of the FCA’s on-going commitment to develop our national presence, most of our vacancies are now open to working in our Edinburgh, Leeds, or London offices. This means that as part of the application process you will be able to select your preference of which office location you would like to work from.

Useful information

This role is graded as Senior Associate – Regulatory

Applications for this role close on at midnight on 9th July 2024

Got a question?

If you are interested in learning more about the role please contact: 

For internal applicants, please contact Louise Nash at k

For external applicants, please contact Beth Haydon at Bk

What to expect from our interview process

The process will involve two separate stages:

Successful candidates will be invited to complete a written market abuse case study and basic data science Python project

A 90min competency-based interview

Your Recruiter will discuss the process in detail with you during screening for the role.

Application support

We want to remove any possible barriers and are committed to providing a wide range of reasonable adjustments so that you can keep the focus on your conversations and be at your best.

If you have an accessibility requirement, disability, or condition that means you might require changes to the recruitment process, please contact your recruiter to discuss this further. Our aim is to make your application as easy and comfortable as possible, and your recruiter will be happy to work with you to make any necessary arrangements where possible. 

Please note that all applications must be submitted through our online portal, applications sent via email will not be accepted.