Trading & Banking Operations Lead
About Job
As a Trading Operations Lead, you will own how StashAway executes trades. Client returns depend not only on portfolio strategy, but on how efficiently those decisions reach the market. You own that execution quality, and the evidence base that proves it.
Your core is buy side execution: owning the “when” and “how” to trade while the Investment Team owns the “what”. You will own our automated execution strategy, act as counterpart to broker trading desks, and build the measurement that proves execution quality to our CIO, Investment team, and where relevant our regulators. Alongside the trading remit, you will work with the Banking Operations Team Leads on parts of daily operations and drive process improvement across banking ops.
We care more about the judgement than the job title. If you've made the call on when and how to trade with real money on the line, we'd like to hear from you.
What you'll work on
Trade Execution Quality
Own the firm’s automated trade execution strategy (the “when” and “how” to trade), improving execution quality by balancing clients’ returns, trading cost and order-fill efficiency across our regions (SG, MY, HK, AE, TH).
Continuously monitor execution quality and act when patterns emerge on specific securities or when conditions change, including the judgement call to continue or halt trading when orders fail due to low volume or price volatility.
Lead periodic portfolio reoptimisation, deciding the execution approach, acting as the firm’s counterpart to broker trading desks, and project-managing the teams involved to ensure clean execution across the elevated-volume window.
Partner closely with Investment, Product and Engineering to ship execution-strategy enhancements, translating execution intent into clear product requirements and seeing them through implementation and onboarding of new securities.
Execution Quality Analysis & Best Execution
Build and own an execution quality analysis capability, covering cost-vs-benchmark measurement, slippage attribution and fill-quality analytics across our markets and instruments.
Fluency with AI-assisted analysis of large trade and settlement datasets, along with the judgement to tell a real signal from an artefact and move quickly from question to evidence.
Establish and maintain the firm’s best-execution framework and governance: the standards, evidence and periodic review that demonstrate we are executing in clients’ best interest.
Own broker and venue performance analysis, assess counterparties on execution quality and cost, and use the evidence to steer routing and relationships.
Own broker and venue performance analysis, assessing counterparties on execution quality and cost, and scan the market for new capabilities such as market maker solutions that expand what and how we can trade (e.g. unlocking otherwise-inaccessible funds, or enabling low-volume, non-fractionalisable ETFs).
Report execution quality to the CIO, Investment team, and senior management on a regular cadence; surface cost and quality issues with recommended actions.
Banking Operations
Partner with the Banking Operations Team Leads to oversee parts of daily operations i.e. transfer approvals, escalation handling cross-functional resolution of operational issues.
Contribute and drive process improvement and automation across banking ops workflows e.g. reducing manual effort and single-points-of-failure. Improve the systems and analytics layer that the team relies on e.g. alert monitoring and process breaks.
Who are we looking for
5+ years in trading operations, execution, or brokerage, including buy-side dealing or investment operations at an asset manager. At least 2 years with direct accountability for trade execution in live markets.
Sound judgement under competing objectives. Able to weigh client returns, fill certainty and trading cost against one another, and make the call when they conflict.
Strong grasp of trade execution strategy and best-execution principles. Able to critically assess and improve an automated execution approach, engage a broker desk on strategy and RFQ pricing, and build execution-quality measurement from the ground up.
Fluent with modern analytical tooling, including AI-assisted analysis, for interrogating large trade and settlement datasets. Able to independently surface trends, test hypotheses, and generate the evidence behind execution decisions, with the judgement to validate what the analysis produces. Prior experience or success cases in agentic workflow is a strong plus.
Systematic, data-driven thinker. Able to specify execution-system changes and work with a Product/ Eng squad to ship them. Comfort with SQL / Python is a strong plus.
A market-structure problem-solver. Able to spot where our current execution rails fall short and architect solutions with counterparties, platforms, or market makers.
Strong communicator and stakeholder manager, comfortable operating in English across phone, email, and chat with internal teams, brokers, and counterparties.
Bonus: exposure to trade settlement, cash operations or banking ops processes; prior people management experience; certifications such as CMFAS or CFA.
Benefits
Employee financial and physical well-being
Compensation package: You will receive a competitive total compensation package that includes employee stock options if you are a full-time employee.
Comprehensive insurance coverage: Outpatient GP clinic visits, Outpatient specialist cover, and group hospitalisation and surgical insurance, and dental cover
Management fee discount: You will receive an employee discount on your asset management fees when you invest with StashAway.
Flexible work arrangements and policies
Flexible work arrangements: With manager setting team schedules with a minimum of 2 days a week in the office.
Work-from-anywhere policy: You may request to work remotely for up to eight weeks in another country.
Unlimited paid annual leave: It should be simple for you to decide if you would like to take more or fewer days off. We trust that you are accountable for your work and know best if you need 10 or 30 days of paid annual leave that year.
Personal work equipment budget: It’s important that you have a workstation that’s optimal for you wherever you are.
Learning and development opportunities
Annual L&D budget: You will be given an annual Learning and Development budget to help you continuously learn in your pursuit of your professional and personal development. You may use the budget for resources and tools that may help you perform better at work.
Team bonding budget and initiatives
Quarterly team bonding budget: We encourage you to socialise with colleagues across job functions, departments, and entities to know them better as individuals beyond what they professionally do.
Annual off-sites (Q4): Each off-site gathers all employees for a full day of company-wide team bonding activities and challenges.