Trade Surveillance Business Analyst

Cognify Search; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognify Search is seeking an experienced Trade Surveillance Business Analyst for a fully on-site role in London. You will contribute across surveillance operations, platform enhancements and regulatory reporting for major financial institutions.

You will engage with Compliance, Trading, Operations and Technology, delivering end-to-end requirements, BRDs and user stories while mentoring junior colleagues in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience reviewing and investigating trade surveillance alerts and cases.
• Experience with surveillance platforms such as NASDAQ SMARTS, NICE Actimize, Scila.
• Strong knowledge of MAR, FCA rules and STOR reporting requirements.
• Understanding of SMCR, MiFID II, EMIR / UK EMIR and RTS 22/24/25.
• End-to-end understanding of the trade lifecycle across asset classes.
• Experience across regulatory compliance, risk controls, data governance and regulatory reporting.
• Strong business analysis, including requirements gathering, gap analysis, documentation and testing.

Responsibilities

• Reviewing, investigating and dispositioning trade surveillance alerts across scenarios.
• Performing detailed trade and order-level analysis across asset classes.
• Supporting STOR preparation and market abuse investigations.
• Supporting scenario and threshold tuning and false-positive reduction.
• Gathering business requirements and producing BRDs, FRDs, user stories.
• Supporting the full SDLC across requirements, design, SIT/UAT and production readiness.
• Assessing data lineage, quality and completeness across trade data.
• Producing governance packs, MI, RAID logs and executive reporting.
• Working with clients on surveillance solution design and RFPs.
• Mentoring junior team members.

Skills

Trade surveillance experience

Regulatory knowledge

Data analysis

Tools

NASDAQ SMARTS

NICE Actimize

Scila

SQL

Python

Excel

Power BI

Jira

Confluence

Git

Bitbucket

Job description

Trade Surveillance Business Analyst - London - Up to £110k

A specialist financial services consultancy is looking for an experienced Trade Surveillance Business Analyst to join its growing team.

This is a fully on-site role in London, offering the opportunity to work across trade surveillance, market abuse monitoring and regulatory technology, supporting major investment banks, broker-dealers and financial institutions.

The role would suit someone who combines strong hands‑on trade surveillance experience with the ability to work across business analysis, compliance, data and technology initiatives.

The Role

You’ll play a key role across both surveillance operations and platform enhancement, working closely with Compliance, Trading, Operations, Technology, Risk and other senior stakeholders.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Reviewing, investigating and dispositioning trade surveillance alerts across scenarios including insider dealing, market manipulation, spoofing, layering, wash trading, marking the close and front running.
• Performing detailed trade and order‑level analysis across multiple asset classes, identifying root causes and determining appropriate escalation.
• Supporting STOR preparation and market abuse investigations.
• Supporting scenario and threshold tuning, calibration and false‑positive reduction across trade and communications surveillance models.
• Gathering business requirements, conducting gap analysis and producing BRDs, FRDs, user stories and operating models.
• Supporting the full SDLC across requirements, solution design, SIT/UAT, defect management and production readiness.
• Assessing data lineage, quality and completeness across trade, order and communications data.
• Producing governance packs, MI, RAID logs, steering committee updates and executive reporting.
• Working with clients to support surveillance solution design, RFPs and proposals.
• Supporting and mentoring more junior team members.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for someone with strong practical experience in trade surveillance, rather than purely theoretical regulatory knowledge.

You’ll ideally have:

• Hands‑on experience reviewing and investigating trade surveillance alerts and managing cases through to disposition.
• Experience with surveillance platforms such as NASDAQ SMARTS, NICE Actimize, Scila or similar.
• Strong knowledge of UK Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), FCA rules and STOR reporting requirements.
• Understanding of SMCR, MiFID II, EMIR / UK EMIR and RTS 22/24/25.
• A strong understanding of the end‑to‑end trade lifecycle across multiple asset classes, particularly Equities, Fixed Income and OTC Derivatives.
• Experience across regulatory compliance, risk controls, data governance and regulatory reporting.
• Strong business analysis experience, including requirements gathering, gap analysis, documentation and testing.

Experience with some or all of the following would be valuable:

SQL | Python | Q | Excel | Power BI | Jira | Confluence | Git | Bitbucket

You’ll also ideally have experience working within Agile and/or Waterfall environments, alongside strong data analysis, testing and QA capabilities.