We're Hiring: Senior Derivatives Specialist
Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: Senior
Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About UsWe are a globally focused organization committed to strengthening financial risk management, treasury operations, investment capabilities, and market-risk governance across diverse markets.
Our Finance, Treasury, Risk, Investment, Accounting, Legal, and Commercial teams collaborate to manage financial exposures, evaluate market opportunities, maintain strong controls, and support disciplined decision-making across complex financial activities.
The RoleWe are seeking an experienced Senior Derivatives Specialist to manage derivative transactions, financial-market exposures, valuation, hedging activities, trade execution, confirmations, settlements, risk monitoring, and derivative-related reporting.
The ideal candidate will combine strong knowledge of derivative instruments with practical experience in market risk, treasury, investment operations, valuation, controls, and financial reporting. The role will work closely with banks, brokers, investment teams, Treasury, Risk, Accounting, Legal, and senior management to ensure derivatives are used appropriately, accurately valued, properly controlled, and aligned with approved risk-management strategies.
Key Responsibilities
- * Manage day-to-day derivative activities across approved financial instruments and portfolios.
- Support the development and implementation of derivative strategies aligned with approved risk-management objectives.
- Analyze derivative exposures arising from foreign exchange, interest rates, commodities, equities, credit, and other relevant market risks.
- Identify, measure, monitor, and report derivative-related financial exposures.
- Manage derivative transactions including forwards, futures, swaps, options, caps, floors, collars, and other approved instruments.
- Evaluate the suitability of derivative instruments for specific hedging and risk-management requirements.
- Support the execution of derivative trades with approved banks, brokers, counterparties, and financial institutions.
- Obtain and compare market quotations and execution terms from approved counterparties.
- Monitor pricing, spreads, transaction costs, liquidity, and execution quality.
- Coordinate trade execution in accordance with approved mandates, limits, and authorization requirements.
- Review trade details for accuracy before and after execution.
- Ensure timely trade capture in treasury, trading, risk, and accounting systems.
- Validate confirmations received from banks, brokers, clearing organizations, and other counterparties.
- Resolve discrepancies between internal trade records and external confirmations.
- Coordinate derivative settlements, maturities, cash movements, collateral requirements, and payment obligations.
- Monitor upcoming derivative maturities, expiries, exercise dates, resets, and settlement events.
- Maintain accurate derivative transaction registers and exposure records.
- Monitor open derivative positions and ensure they remain within approved limits and mandates.
- Track counterparty exposure, credit limits, collateral requirements, and utilization.
- Escalate limit breaches, unusual transactions, market movements, valuation differences, and operational issues.
- Perform or coordinate daily and periodic derivative valuations.
- Review mark-to-market valuations provided by banks, brokers, valuation agents, or internal models.
- Investigate valuation differences and resolve discrepancies with counterparties and internal stakeholders.
- Monitor realized and unrealized derivative gains and losses.
- Analyze derivative valuation movements and explain significant changes to management.
- Support independent price verification and valuation-control processes.
- Coordinate with Accounting on derivative accounting, fair-value adjustments, realized gains and losses, and financial-statement treatment.
- Support hedge-accounting activities where applicable, including hedge designation, documentation, effectiveness testing, and ongoing monitoring.
- Maintain appropriate documentation for derivative transactions and hedging relationships.
- Monitor hedge effectiveness and identify situations requiring restructuring, rebalancing, or corrective action.
- Analyze market movements and their potential impact on derivative positions and underlying exposures.
- Conduct sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis, stress testing, and what-if assessments.
- Monitor volatility, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, commodity prices, credit spreads, and other relevant market variables.
- Assess potential impacts of market movements on portfolio values, cash flows, earnings, and liquidity.
- Prepare derivative exposure forecasts based on expected transactions, market conditions, and business requirements.
- Support Treasury and Risk teams in developing hedging recommendations.
- Evaluate natural hedging opportunities before considering derivative transactions.
- Support the design of hedging programs for foreign exchange, interest-rate, commodity, and other financial exposures.
- Review hedge ratios, maturity profiles, instrument selection, and transaction timing.
- Monitor hedge performance and recommend adjustments when underlying exposures or market conditions change.
- Coordinate derivative activity with liquidity, cash-flow, investment, and broader treasury strategies.
- Support interest-rate risk management through swaps, caps, floors, collars, and related instruments.
- Support foreign-exchange risk management through forwards, swaps, options, and other approved instruments.
- Support commodity-price risk management through appropriate futures, swaps, options, and structured hedging instruments.
- Analyze option structures, including premiums, strikes, maturities, sensitivities, and payoff profiles.
- Monitor key option risk measures and explain their implications to relevant stakeholders.
- Review derivative documentation, including confirmations, master agreements, schedules, collateral terms, and transaction-specific documentation.
- Coordinate with Legal and Compliance on derivative documentation, contractual requirements, regulatory obligations, and counterparty approvals.
- Monitor collateral and margin requirements for applicable derivative transactions.
- Coordinate margin calls, collateral movements, disputes, and related reconciliations.
- Maintain accurate records of derivative positions, valuations, collateral, settlements, and supporting documentation.
Key Performance Indicators
- * Derivative transaction accuracy
- Trade execution accuracy
- Trade capture timeliness
- Confirmation matching rate
- Settlement accuracy
- Settlement timeliness
- Derivative position reconciliation accuracy
- Valuation accuracy
- Independent price verification completion
- Valuation discrepancy resolution time
- Realized and unrealized P&L accuracy
- Hedge effectiveness
- Hedge coverage ratio
- Hedging strategy performance
- Exposure forecast accuracy
- Market-risk reporting accuracy
- Counterparty exposure accuracy
- Counterparty limit compliance
- Collateral and margin accuracy
- Margin-call response time
- Derivative maturity management
- Option exercise and expiry accuracy
- Cash-flow forecast accuracy
- Interest-rate risk management performance
- Foreign-exchange hedge performance
- Commodity hedge performance
- Market-risk limit compliance
- Trading mandate compliance
- Policy and control compliance
- Hedge-accounting documentation accuracy
- Hedge-accounting effectiveness testing
- Audit issue resolution
- Derivative reporting timeliness
- Management reporting accuracy
- Risk escalation timeliness
- Operational incident rate
- Settlement-failure rate
- Derivative processing efficiency
- System data accuracy
- Automation and process-improvement delivery
- Counterparty service performance
- Documentation completeness
- Regulatory compliance
- Training and knowledge-development completion
Ideal CandidateThe successful candidate should have strong experience in derivatives, treasury, financial markets, market risk, investment operations, trading operations, corporate treasury, or financial risk management, preferably within a multinational organization, financial institution, investment environment, or complex corporate treasury function.
The candidate should demonstrate:
- Strong knowledge of derivative instruments and financial-market products.
- Practical experience with forwards, futures, swaps, options, and related derivative structures.
- Strong understanding of derivative pricing, valuation, settlement, and lifecycle management.
- Experience managing derivative transactions and market exposures.
- Strong understanding of hedging strategies and financial-risk management principles.
- Experience with foreign-exchange, interest-rate, commodity, equity, or credit derivatives.
- Strong knowledge of mark-to-market valuation and independent price verification.
- Experience analyzing derivative gains, losses, sensitivities, and valuation movements.
- Understanding of option pricing concepts and key derivative risk measures.
- Experience with hedge-accounting principles and effectiveness testing is highly desirable.
- Strong understanding of counterparty risk, collateral, margin, and credit limits.
