Head of Middle Office

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Basic Function

The Head of Middle Office will lead daily close, exposure, risk, P&L, and inventory reporting for an asset-backed commodity trading organization. Near term, the role will focus on CTRM implementation and moving the team from weekly to reliable daily reporting in a spreadsheet-heavy environment. Longer term, the successful candidate will drive AI-enabled analytics and automation to improve insight, controls, and efficiency.

The ideal candidate will have demonstrated capability with asset-backed CTRM, physical and financial commodity trading, inventory valuation reconciliation, team leadership and career development of their staff, and a disciplined control mindset. They must be able to reconcile trading performance to existing management information and operate as a hands-on player/coach as the organization grows.

Roles & Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the Middle Office function responsible for trade capture validation, daily exposure, risk, performance, and working capital reporting, inventory controls, risk analytics, and exception management across asset-backed physical and financial commodity trading activity.
• Own valuation governance, including deal-entry standards in CTRM and independent curve validation to ensure valuation is fair, consistent, and controlled.
• Partner with Commercial Trading, Scheduling, and Transaction Services teams to evaluate transaction implications and support asset-network optimization through transparent reporting on flows, balances, logistics, constraints, and margin drivers.
• Maintain and enhance control frameworks across the trade lifecycle, including inventory, valuation, hedge, limit, reconciliation, and escalation controls.
• Drive the short-term CTRM implementation agenda, including finalization of requirements, process design, and user testing.
• Lead the transition from weekly to disciplined daily reporting, strengthening spreadsheet controls, ownership, reconciliations, and exception management until scalable system capabilities are delivered.
• Define and execute a longer-term roadmap for AI-enabled analytics and automation that reduce manual effort and improve insight, controls, and efficiency.
• Lead investigations and analytical bridges that reconcile P&L variances, inventory movements, standard-cost valuation, accounting results, and existing management information, ensuring root causes are addressed and stakeholders understand key timing, valuation, and cost-allocation impacts.
• Develop, mentor, and manage a high-performing Middle Office team as a hands-on player/coach, establishing clear priorities, accountability, training, and practical problem-solving routines.

Role Qualifications

Required Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Mathematics, Engineering, Supply Chain, Business, or a related field; advanced degree or professional certification is preferred.
• Significant experience in a commodity trading middle office, risk control, product control, commercial operations, supply chain finance, trading operations, or related control function within an asset-backed trading or industrial manufacturing environment.
• Strong knowledge of physical commodity trade lifecycle processes, commodity market data, valuation principles, P&L attribution, exposure reporting, inventory accounting, standard cost inventory valuation, logistics economics, and risk metrics.
• Hands-on CTRM implementation experience, including requirements definition, process design, testing, data migration support, reporting outputs, controls, user adoption, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Demonstrated ability to reconcile trading performance, daily P&L, inventory movements, and asset economics to existing management information where standard-cost inventory valuation can obscure commercial margin, timing differences, and market-driven performance.
• Experience supporting chemicals, petrochemicals, refined products, NGLs, natural gas, crude oil, feedstocks, intermediates, polymers, or related asset-backed commodity markets.
• Practical understanding of manufacturing economics, plant constraints, production planning, storage, transportation, contract optionality, and asset optimization.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams, manage priorities, influence commercial and functional stakeholders, and operate effectively under tight daily reporting deadlines.
• Proficiency with reporting, data analysis, spreadsheet modeling, and process automation tools; Power BI, SQL, Python, or AI-enabled analytics capability is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of internal controls, segregation of duties, audit expectations, hedge governance, inventory controls, operational risk management, independent challenge, and clear escalation standards.

Leadership and Behavioral Expectations

• Acts with independence, integrity, sound judgment, and commercial awareness while maintaining the challenge required of a control function.
• Communicates complex trading, valuation, and risk issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Promotes accountability, accuracy, transparency, continuous improvement, timely escalation, resilience, and composure in a fast-moving environment.
• Operates as a hands-on player/coach who is willing to work through details, develop people in real time, and solve practical process, data, and control issues alongside the team.

Preferred Qualifications and Key Success Measures

Preferred Experience and Qualifications

• Experience supporting trading activity directly connected to chemical manufacturing, petrochemicals, refining, midstream, or other asset-backed industrial operations, including manufacturing margin and standard-cost reporting complexity.
• Hands-on experience with CTRM and ERP (e.g. SAP) integration, including plant interfaces, movement capture, inventory reconciliation, and system controls.
• Understanding of hedging strategies for commodity and related exposures, with familiarity supporting hedge accounting treatment.

Key Success Measures

• Strong stakeholder partnership across Commercial, Finance, DT (IT), and Transaction Services.
• Trusted daily reporting and proactive escalation of issues and exceptions.
• Transition from weekly to daily report production.
• Successful CTRM implementation, with improved automation, data quality, reporting transparency, and system effectiveness.
• Clear reconciliation of trading performance to management information.
• Effective development, retention, and leadership of Middle Office talent.
• Measurable deployment of AI-enabled analytics and automation that improve insight, decision support, efficiency, and control effectiveness.

Competencies

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