Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Investment Operations Specialist

🎯 Role Definition

An Investment Operations Specialist is responsible for executing, controlling and improving the operational lifecycle of investment products and trades across equities, fixed income, derivatives and funds. This role ensures accurate trade capture and booking, timely settlement, robust reconciliations, correct NAV and corporate action processing, and clear client and regulatory reporting while minimizing operational risk. The specialist partners with portfolio managers, middle and back office teams, custodians and external counterparties to deliver high-quality, auditable operational processes and continuous process improvement.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Operations Analyst / Junior Operations Associate
Trade Support / Trading Assistant
Fund Accounting Analyst / Reconciliations Analyst

Advancement To:

Senior Investment Operations Specialist / Senior Middle Office Analyst
Portfolio Operations Manager / Fund Operations Manager
Head of Investment Operations / Operations Team Lead

Lateral Moves:

Risk Analyst (Operational or Counterparty Risk)
Client Reporting Analyst / Relationship Operations
Business Analyst / Product Operations
Fund Accounting / NAV Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Manage the end-to-end trade lifecycle including trade capture, booking, affirmation, allocation and settlement for equity, fixed income, FX and derivatives instruments, ensuring trades settle on time and exception lists are cleared promptly.
Execute daily settlement activities with custodians, prime brokers and counterparties via SWIFT, FIX or proprietary connectivity, proactively resolving fails and settlement breaks to reduce P&L and counterparty risk.
Perform daily position and cash reconciliation across internal systems and custodial statements, investigate and resolve discrepancies, and provide root-cause analysis to reduce recurring breaks.
Process and validate corporate actions (dividends, splits, mergers, spin-offs, tender offers) and ensure correct posting to positions and accurate client reporting and NAV impact assessment.
Support daily NAV calculation and validation for mutual funds, ETFs and pooled vehicles by reconciling cash, positions, accruals and pricing variances with fund accounting teams.
Monitor and resolve trade exceptions and breaks through escalation workflows, including liaising with traders, portfolio managers, counterparty operations and third-party administrators to remove operational bottlenecks.
Maintain and reconcile cash movements: manage cash sweeps, FX settlements, funding requests and intraday liquidity to ensure accurate cash balances and timely margin funding.
Oversee corporate and client confirmations, ensuring timely issuance and affirmation, and coordinate with middle/back office teams to remediate affirmation failures and unmatched trades.
Support margin and collateral management including margin calls, collateral substitution, haircuts calculations and follow-up with counterparties for derivatives and securities lending arrangements.
Own daily operational controls and reconciliations, prepare variance reports, and ensure timely remediation of control failures and documentation for internal and external audits.
Perform trade capture quality reviews and data integrity checks to ensure accurate booking in portfolio management, order management and accounting systems (e.g., Aladdin, Charles River, SimCorp, Advent).
Lead or support projects to implement process improvements, automation (RPA, straight-through processing) and system upgrades, including UAT, requirements definition and vendor coordination.
Prepare and deliver operational and client-facing reports including trade blotters, settlement status reports, exception dashboards and regulatory filings in a timely, auditable format.
Coordinate with compliance, AML/KYC and onboarding teams to ensure proper client documentation, account setup and trade routing for new clients and mandates.
Provide subject matter expertise for new product onboarding, ensuring operational readiness for new securities, fund structures, share classes and trade workflows.
Conduct root cause analysis of recurring operational issues, create process maps, and implement corrective actions and preventative controls to reduce manual interventions and operational losses.
Support month-end and quarter-end operational close activities, including cutoff controls, reconciliations and delivery of accounting packages to finance and external administrators.
Manage relationships with custodians, transfer agents, prime brokers and vendors to escalate and resolve issues, negotiate service levels and monitor third-party performance metrics.
Serve as point of contact for internal and external audits, regulatory examinations and vendor due diligence by preparing documentation, remediation plans and status updates.
Create and update standard operating procedures (SOPs), job aids and knowledge base articles to ensure consistent operational delivery and facilitate cross-training.
Participate in incident response and outage management for trading and settlement systems, coordinating workaround processes and communicating status to stakeholders.
Provide training and mentorship to junior operations staff, sharing best practices for trade processing, reconciliations and exception management to build team capability and resilience.
Track and analyze operational KPIs (fail rates, reconciliation age, settlement cycle times) and present findings to senior management with recommended actions to enhance efficiency and reduce risk.
Support client onboarding and transition activities, including data migration, trade testing, cutover planning and operational readiness checks for new mandates and platforms.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Trade operations and settlement lifecycle management for equities, fixed income, FX and derivatives.
Fund accounting basics and NAV calculation workflow understanding.
Corporate actions processing and event impact analysis.
Reconciliation techniques: position, cash and trade reconciliations; familiarity with automated reconciliation tools.
Margin and collateral management, securities lending operations and prime brokerage interactions.
Proficiency with industry systems such as BlackRock Aladdin, Charles River, SimCorp Dimension, Calypso, Advent, or similar OMS/PMS/EMS platforms.
Familiarity with messaging standards and protocols: SWIFT, FIX, ISO20022, and experience with custodian connectivity.
Advanced Microsoft Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, macros) and strong data manipulation skills; basic SQL for data extraction.
Experience in transaction lifecycle automation, RPA, or scripting (VBA, Python) is a plus.
Strong understanding of regulatory and compliance requirements impacting operations (CFTC, SEC, MiFID II, FATCA, AIFMD as applicable).
Experience with trade confirm/affirm systems and reconciliation platforms (e.g., DTCC, CREST, Omgeo).
Working knowledge of accounting principles and journal entry preparation for settlement and NAV adjustments.

Soft Skills

Meticulous attention to detail with a strong bias for accuracy and auditability.
Excellent verbal and written communication for cross-functional coordination and client interactions.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to perform root-cause analysis and implement corrective actions.
Time management and prioritization skills in a fast-paced, high-volume operational environment.
Collaborative team player who can influence stakeholders across trading, portfolio management and third-party providers.
Proactive mindset focused on continuous improvement and operational excellence.
Resilience under pressure and ability to manage competing deadlines and incident responses.
Customer-service orientation and ability to represent the firm to counterparties and clients professionally.
Project management aptitude to support system implementations and process change initiatives.
Ethical judgment and sound decision-making aligned with regulatory and firm risk frameworks.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Accounting, Computer Science or related field.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s with professional qualifications such as CFA (Level I/II/III), CAIA, ACCA, or relevant quantitative certifications.
Advanced degree (MSc, MA, MBA) in Finance, Financial Engineering, Data Analytics or related discipline is advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Finance
Accounting
Economics
Business Administration
Computer Science / Information Systems
Financial Engineering / Mathematics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

2–5 years of investment operations, middle office, trade support, fund accounting or custody operations experience.

Preferred:

3–7 years of demonstrated experience supporting institutional asset managers, custodial banks, prime brokers, hedge funds or broker-dealers with proven work in trade lifecycle, settlements, reconciliations, corporate actions and NAV operations. Experience with major OMS/PMS systems, SWIFT messaging, and leading operational change or automation initiatives is strongly preferred.