Custody Operations Settlements Manager

U.S. Bank; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

U.S. Bank is seeking a seasoned Custody Operations Settlement Manager to lead day-to-day global settlement activity and cash management across currencies and markets in Dublin.

You will oversee reconciliations, risk controls, and cross-functional collaboration with reconciliation, asset servicing and product teams. The role emphasizes people leadership, process improvements, and ability to manage complex settlements, ensuring accurate trade lifecycle, timely cash flows and high client service

Qualifications

• Strong experience within Custody Operations or Securities Settlements.
• Experience managing cash and settlement activity across multiple currencies.
• Proven people-management or operational leadership experience.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Strong attention to detail and risk awareness.
• Ability to prioritise under strict deadlines.

Responsibilities

• Lead global securities settlement activity across markets and asset classes.
• Oversee cash management and multi-currency cash positions.
• Maintain effective oversight of reconciliations and exceptions.
• Drive process improvements and establish ownership for complex issues.
• Lead, coach and develop team members and ensure strong client service.
• Partner with reconciliation, asset servicing and product teams on remediation.

Skills

Custody Operations

Securities Settlements

Cash Operations

Stakeholder Management

People Leadership

Analytical Skills

Tools

Excel

SWIFT messaging

Job description

At U.S. Bank, we’re on a journey to do our best. Helping the customers and businesses we serve to make better and smarter financial decisions, enabling the communities we support to grow and succeed in the right ways, all more confidently and more often—that’s what we call the courage to thrive. We believe it takes all of us to bring our shared ambition to life, and each person is unique in their potential. A career with U.S. Bank gives you a wide, ever-growing range of opportunities to discover what makes you thrive. Try new things, learn new skills and discover what you excel at—all from Day One.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Bank, Elavon is committed to building the platforms and ecosystems that help over 1.5 million customers around the world to achieve their financial goals—no matter what they need. From transaction processing to customer service, to driving innovation and launching new products, we’re building a range of tailored payment solutions powered by the latest technology. As part of our team, you can explore what motivates and energizes your career goals: partnering with our customers, our communities, and each other.

We actively uphold transparent and fair hiring practices that support individual opportunity, inclusive culture, and career mobility across all levels of our organisation.

We offer meaningful opportunities for growth, a culture of inclusion, and a strong commitment to transparency and integrity in everything we do.

Job Description

Custody Operations Settlement Manager Role

Key Responsibilities

Trade Settlements

• Lead the day-to-day management of global securities settlement activity across multiple markets, currencies and asset classes.
• Ensure trades are instructed accurately and within applicable market and custodian deadlines.
• Oversee the trade lifecycle from instruction through to final settlement, ensuring failed, pending and unmatched transactions are actively investigated.
• Drive root-cause analysis of settlement failures and recurring exceptions, ensuring sustainable remediation rather than repeated manual intervention.
• Oversee complex settlement activity across products including equities, fixed income/debt, ETFs, FX, mutual funds, derivatives and alternative investments, consistent with the product coverage of the existing Dublin Settlements team.
• Maintain appropriate oversight of manual settlements, corrections and bookings within internal custody/books-and-records systems.

Cash Management

• Provide operational oversight of cash flows generated through securities settlement activity.
• Monitor multi-currency cash positions, funding requirements, nostro activity and overdraft exposures.
• Oversee investigation of cash exceptions, including unapplied funds, unexpected receipts/payments, funding discrepancies and cash differences.
• Work closely with reconciliation teams to resolve aged cash and nostro breaks.
• Identify recurring drivers of cash differences and implement preventative controls and process improvements.

Reconciliations & Exception Management

• Maintain effective oversight of daily cash, asset and settlement reconciliations, ensuring exceptions are investigated within agreed timeframes.
• Drive reduction of aged reconciliation breaks and ensure new exceptions do not develop into long-term backlogs.
• Review trends across settlement and cash exceptions to identify systemic or upstream root causes.
• Establish clear ownership and escalation paths for complex exceptions.
• Partner with Reconciliation, Asset Servicing, Cash, Corporate Actions and other operational teams where cross-functional remediation is required.

People Leadership & Performance

• Lead, coach and develop members of the Cash & Trade Settlements team.
• Set clear performance expectations and ensure appropriate allocation of daily workloads.
• Build subject-matter expertise and resilience across critical settlement and cash processes.
• Provide regular coaching, feedback and development opportunities.
• Ensure effective cross-training and succession planning across the function.
• Support recruitment, onboarding and training of new team members.
• Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, continuous improvement and high-quality client service.

Operational Risk & Controls

• Maintain a strong operational control environment across trade and cash processing.
• Identify and elevate potential financial, client, regulatory and reputational risks.
• Ensure processing errors and control failures are investigated promptly and appropriate corrective actions are implemented.
• Maintain effective maker/checker and supervisory controls for high-risk activity.
• Ensure procedures, controls and operational documentation remain accurate and current.
• Support audit, compliance, regulatory and risk reviews where required.

Client & Stakeholder Management

• Act as a senior escalation point for complex cash and settlement issues.
• Manage internal and external client escalations through to resolution.
• Build strong relationships with custodians, sub-custodians, internal business lines and operational partners.
• Communicate clearly on material settlement failures, funding issues and operational incidents.
• Ensure high standards of internal and external client service.

Change, Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to automate manual settlement, cash and reconciliation processes.
• Challenge inefficient processes and implement solutions that reduce operational risk and manual intervention.
• Lead or support operational projects, platform migrations and market changes.
• Partner with Product, Technology and other Operations teams on system enhancements and defect remediation.
• Analyse settlement and reconciliation trends to identify opportunities for structural improvement.
• Ensure operational readiness for future client and platform migrations.

Experience & Skills

Essential

• Strong experience within Custody Operations, Securities Settlements, Cash Operations or a comparable financial-services operations environment.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end securities trade lifecycle.
• Experience managing cash and settlement activity across multiple currencies and international markets.
• Strong understanding of settlement failures, reconciliation breaks, cash funding and exception management.
• Demonstrated people-management or operational leadership experience.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Strong attention to detail and operational-risk awareness.
• Ability to prioritise effectively and make decisions within strict market and currency deadlines.
• Strong stakeholder-management and communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to manage escalations and complex operational issues.

Desirable

• Knowledge of SWIFT settlement and cash messaging.
• Experience dealing with global custodians, sub-custodians and CSDs/ICSDs.
• Experience with transformation, automation, platform migration or operational remediation programmes.
• Knowledge of European settlement practices and regulatory requirements.
• Strong Microsoft Office skills, particularly Excel.
• Previous responsibility for control frameworks, procedures, audit or operational-risk remediation.

Location expectations

This role requires working from a U.S. Bank location three (3) or more days per week.

Accessibility

We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment experience. If you need adjustments at any stage of the application or hiring process, please contact your recruiter for guidance and support.

Total Rewards

U.S. Bank is committed to fair, equitable, and transparent compensation practices in line with local regulatory and legal requirements. Our total rewards approach is designed to attract, retain, and support top talent while ensuring equal pay for work of equal value.

We offer a market-competitive compensation package that includes:

• Clearly defined salary ranges aligned with industry benchmarks and internal equity standards.
• Performance-based incentives for eligible employees (as defined by relevant plan rules), awarded through transparent, objective criteria that recognize both individual and company performance.
• Inclusive equitable benefits that are accessible to all employees and focused around our 3 main pillars of financial wellbeing, health & wellness).
• Continuous development opportunities including training, education support, and career progression pathways based on inclusive and transparent criteria.
• Employee recognition programs that celebrate achievements and milestones for all.

We regularly review our compensation and benefits to ensure they remain competitive, inclusive, and responsive to employee needs and market trends. Further details of the compensation package will be provided upon application.

We encourage candidates to explore the full value of our offer, including monetary and non-monetary benefits, at Employee benefits and development | U.S. Bank | Elavon.

Closing Date

Posting may be closed earlier due to high volume of applicants.

We aim to provide timely updates throughout the process and encourage early applications to ensure consideration.