Assistant Market Operations Technician in Mo Collateral & Counterparty Ops

at  Bank of England

DEPARTMENT OVERVIEW

The Strategic Change & Operations (SCO) directorate is central to the success of MBPR. With around 140 staff, it undertakes the management and control of end-to-end business process and data flows in relation to market operations; works to devise and implement the operational strategy for MBPR and takes the lead on cross-divisional issues relating to: operational resilience; change delivery; business planning and oversight; challenge and mitigation of operational risk; people strategy including promoting diversity and inclusion.
Middle Office which sits in SCO has four main teams: Counterparty & Collateral Operations (CCO), Operational Financial Control (OFC), Pricing Policy & Valuation (PPV) and the EDM Support Team (EST). The Middle Office team sits in the heart of the Bank’s financial operations in supporting the Markets Front Office and Risk Management functions and systems, including links through to Back Office and external counterparties.
The Collateral & Counterparty Ops (CCO) team manages the eligibility of balance sheet and collateral assets including loans and the application of haircuts, whilst also being responsible for how counterparty and instruments data are stored in Markets’ systems. The Pricing Policy & Valuations (PPV) price all eligible collateral each day.
Both teams use the EDM system on a daily basis, the EDM Support Team (EST) within Middle office mainly aims to support CCO and PPV with their use of EDM. EST also manage Middle Office system change and other EDM related activities (e.g. a recent EDM Upgrade Project) by being the primary liaison team between Markets, DSID and Technology.

JOB DESCRIPTION

We are seeking an individual to join our team as an Assistant Market Operations Technician whilst also completing the Business Analyst Level 4 Apprenticeship programme. See links below for more information
Markets is a dynamic and fast paced area and, as a result, the job holder will have exposure to high profile projects in addition to their regular work. EDM is a critical system for Middle Office/Markets to deliver on their strategic aims and with EST being a relatively small team, the jobholder will be required to understand the business requirements and then assist technology stakeholders through the development cycle. Once knowledge of the EDM system grows, the job holder could potentially convert business requirements into technical requirements to help make the change process even more efficient.
A large part of the role on EST is managing general change. The jobholder will need to help prioritise change between the CCO and PPV teams as well as taking into consideration the wider Markets and Banking areas. EST regularly liaise with the DSID Team (EDM system owners) inputting into the overall change programme, often assisting with testing and other areas of the change process.
For more information on the apprenticeship, including the end point assessment please see:
Business Analyst Level 4 Apprenticeship | QA

Below are the main areas of responsibility for the EST team:

• Change Management – We are currently loosely following an Agile change model.
• Incident Management and Resolution – initial triage of issues raised using system knowledge where possible.
• EDM Project Change Management – lead and oversee on Markets related projects, organising test systems for CCO/PPV as well as managing test cycles and plans to help project to remain within agreed timelines.
• General EDM improvement Change Management and impact analysis– EDM is an enterprise system, EST need to keep abreast of system changes to assess potential impacts on Middle Office users and processes; and associated risks. Provision of technical expertise and testing support may be required. There is a constant programme of EDM change and the EST Team play an important role in assessing the nature of changes across the system, with the system owners, and identifying potential impacts on Middle Office data and processes. For Markets related change, some change may benefit from EST testing etc.
• Identify and implementation of EDM and/or change process improvements – Continuously seeking to make the system and/or processes more efficient.
• Management Information – Support the key operations of the team, spotting trends and anomalies in the data where appropriate.
• Requirements analysis - Supporting CCO and PPV on the articulation of business requirements and where possible, convert these into technical requirements.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR THE APPRENTICESHIP

• Minimum of five GCSEs at C (4) and above (including English and maths) and have or are predicted to have at least 72 UCAS points from up to three A levels ( or equivalent).

• Working to tight deadlines with the ability to manage your own workload and effectively prioritise tasks
• Attention to detail with the ability to deliver outputs to a high standard
• Coordinating large change initiatives or projects, including the ability to identify and implement improvements
• Some knowledge of the Bank’s financial market operations would be an advantage
• Organisational skills
• Proactively pushing to complete workstreams by chasing relevant areas/people when necessary
• A team player, willing to help others to achieve results
• An intuitive ability to identify and understand our risk and controls, challenging where things look wrong to drive improvements
• An ability to work on multiple work streams, prioritising effectively and often to tight deadlines
• Develop a good understanding of business change and the related development life cycles. Also an understanding of the practises and concepts around collating data for change (e.g. prioritisation of CRs etc)
• Ability to look beyond just the ‘button pushing’ of processes, have a keen interest in the ‘how’ and ‘why’ around how our systems work and support MO business processes.