Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Securities and Capital Markets Domain Consultant

🎯 Role Definition

A Securities and Capital Markets Domain Consultant is a subject-matter expert who advises trading, product control, operations, and technology teams on the design, implementation and optimization of securities lifecycle processes, risk and regulatory workflows, and market-facing systems. This role combines domain expertise across equities, fixed income, FX and derivatives with practical experience in trade capture, middle-office controls, post-trade processing, regulatory reporting (eg. EMIR, SFTR, MiFID II, Dodd-Frank), vendor selection and program delivery. The consultant translates complex business requirements into clear functional specifications, leads stakeholder workshops, supports testing and UAT, and ensures the solution meets operational, control and compliance goals.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Business Analyst (Capital Markets)
Middle/Back Office Manager (Securities Operations)
Product Control / Front Office Support Lead

Advancement To:

Lead Domain Consultant / Principal Consultant, Capital Markets
Program/Delivery Lead for Market Infrastructure Transformations
Head of Product or Head of Operations (Securities)

Lateral Moves:

Regulatory Reporting Specialist (MiFID/EMIR/SFTR)
Vendor/Third-Party Integration Consultant (Trading/Collateral Platforms)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead discovery workshops with trading desks, product control, operations and risk teams to map the full trade lifecycle (pre-trade, execution, trade capture, affirmation, confirmation, clearing, settlement and reconciliation) and produce prioritized gap analyses and actionable remediation roadmaps.
Own the functional design and requirements specification for front-to-back implementations of trading, OMS/EMS, middle-office and post-trade systems, translating complex product characteristics (equities, fixed income, FX, repos, swaps, options, futures) into rigorous system requirements and business rules.
Design and validate trade enrichment, market data mapping, and instrument reference data models to ensure straight-through-processing (STP) and accurate P&L and risk calculation across valuation engines and risk systems.
Define and implement regulatory reporting requirements and end-to-end flows for EMIR, SFTR, MiFIR/MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, SEC, FINRA and trade reporting regimes, including trade capture, lifecycle event handling, UTI/ISIN generation and aggregator/transmission logic.
Drive the reconciliation strategy and exception management framework across cash, positions, trade, corporate actions and collateral lines, creating tolerance rules, automated resolution flows and KPI monitoring.
Partner with technology architects to design integration patterns (REST APIs, FIX, SWIFT, MQ, SFTP, ISO20022) and ensure robust interface specifications, message mapping, and error handling for upstream venues, clearing houses, custodians and third-party vendors.
Provide domain-led configuration oversight during vendor implementations (Treasury/Collateral, Clearing/Settlement, OMS/EMS, Market Data, Portfolio/Risk systems), ensuring testable acceptance criteria and alignment to business process flows.
Lead user acceptance testing (UAT) and functional/regression test cycles, author detailed test scenarios for complex trade lifecycle events (corporate actions, breaks, partial settlement, novation) and coordinate cross-functional test execution and defect triage.
Build and present high-impact business cases for process automation, straight-through-processing improvements, and tech-stack rationalization, quantifying cost-to-fix, operational risk reduction and speed-to-market benefits.
Advise on collateral optimization, margining workflows, segregation/commingling rules and integration with CCPs and prime brokers to support efficient collateral re-use and funding strategies.
Conduct vendor due diligence and RFP evaluation from a product and regulatory perspective, scoring functional fit, controls, SLAs and roadmap alignment for trading and post-trade platforms.
Translate regulatory change impact into actionable program deliverables: gap analysis, remediation design, data lineage mapping and cutover planning to meet mandated timelines and auditability requirements.
Mentor business analysts and junior consultants on capital markets product conventions, trade lifecycle intricacies and best practices for writing high-quality functional requirements and test cases.
Collaborate with data engineering and quant teams to define data requirements for risk, valuation and regulatory reporting, including time-series market data, yield curves, volatility surfaces and position-level reconciliations.
Establish operational controls and governance for trade capture, affirmation/confirmation workflows, lifecycle event processing and daily reconciliations, including runbooks, RACI matrices and escalation paths.
Drive process improvement initiatives to reduce manual interventions, improve exception resolution SLAs and increase STP rates by applying lean principles and automation tooling (RPA, workflow engines).
Support post-implementation hypercare and stabilization, monitoring production metrics, identifying recurring break patterns and implementing systemic fixes to prevent repeated incidents.
Act as the primary interface between business stakeholders and technology vendors during migrations, upgrades and platform consolidations, ensuring minimal business disruption and clear cutover criteria.
Provide thought leadership on market structure trends (clearing reform, T+1/T+2 settlement changes, central counterparty rules, market fragmentation) and advise clients on strategic positioning and system readiness.
Develop and deliver training material, process manuals and runbooks to operations, front office and control functions to ensure consistent adoption of new systems and workflows.
Lead ad-hoc investigations of trade breaks, corporate action errors, valuation discrepancies and regulatory breaches, preparing root cause analysis, remediation plans and control enhancements.
Define KPIs and dashboards for operations, trade capture quality, settlement failure rates and regulatory submission health, collaborating with BI teams to operationalize monitoring and alerting.
Support mergers, acquisitions and platform consolidations by mapping product and process harmonization needs, data migration validation and cutover readiness testing.

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)

Deep domain knowledge of securities products: equities, fixed income, FX, repos, swaps, options, futures and structured products, including lifecycle events and market conventions.
Expert understanding of trade lifecycle, post-trade processing, settlement mechanics (T+0/T+1/T+2), custodial flows and clearing house interactions.
Regulatory reporting expertise: EMIR, SFTR, MiFIR/MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, SFTR, CFTC/SEC reporting regimes and experience implementing compliance workflows and data feeds.
Experience with messaging protocols and interfaces: FIX, SWIFT MT/ISO20022, FIXML, REST APIs, MQ and SFTP integrations.
Data modeling and data lineage skills for reference data, instrument master, position and transaction datasets; familiarity with common market data vendors (Bloomberg, Refinitiv/Refinitiv, IHS Markit).
Proficiency with SQL for data validation and reporting; familiarity with Python, R or scripting for automation and data manipulation is desirable.
Practical experience with trading and post-trade platforms: OMS/EMS, execution venues, clearing interfaces, settlement platforms, collateral/tri-party systems and major vendor suites.
Hands-on experience defining functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and building traceability between requirements, tests and defects.
Strong testing pedigree: UAT planning and execution, regression testing, scenario design for complex lifecycle events and integration testing across multiple counterparties.
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), containerisation and microservices architecture as they relate to market infrastructure modernization projects.
Knowledge of reconciliation engines, exception management tools and automation platforms (RPA, workflow orchestration).
Understanding of valuation and risk systems integration: P&L attribution, fair value adjustments, sensitivity calculations and risk metrics ingestion.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills; proven ability to engage front office, risk, legal and operations executives and translate priorities into delivery plans.
Excellent written and verbal communication: able to write crisp functional specifications, board-level presentations and training materials.
Analytical problem solver with attention to detail and a pragmatic focus on delivering business value and risk reduction.
Collaborative team player who can work in cross-functional, global teams and coach junior staff.
Project and program delivery mindset with capability to manage competing priorities, tight timelines and complex dependencies.
Change management capability: training, adoption planning and cutover coordination for complex operational transformations.
Client-facing consulting skills: scoping, proposal development, capability demonstrations and value articulation.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MSc/MBA) in Finance, Financial Engineering, Computer Science, or related discipline.
Professional certifications (FRM, CFA, ACT, or relevant market/regulatory certifications) considered a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Finance / Financial Engineering
Economics / Business
Computer Science / Information Systems
Mathematics / Statistics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–12+ years in capital markets, with demonstrable experience in securities operations, middle-office, trade lifecycle, or regulatory reporting programs.

Preferred:

7+ years in domain consulting, business analysis or product roles supporting trading, post-trade, or regulatory programs.
Proven track record leading cross-functional implementations, vendor integrations or regulatory remediation projects in a sell-side or buy-side environment.