Senior Associate - Fund Administration (Fund Accounting) - Middle Office Specialist

Core Details and Responsibilities

This role is based in our office in Cape Town as a Middle Office Specialist – Fund Administration; you will report to the Associate Director - Fund Administration (Reconciliations) - Hedge Daily

The Middle Office Specialist is primarily responsible for designing, building, and implementing automation solutions across the Middle Office within the Catalyst Group, with a primary initial focus on the end-to-end automaton of the reconciliations function — covering cash, positions, and trade reconciliations. The role is focused on reducing manual effort, increasing scalability, and improving accuracy across (initially) the reconciliation process through automation. While the core focus is automation delivery, the specialist will retain a working knowledge of the underlying reconciliation processes to perform reconciliations, ensuring business continuity. The role is thus a hybrid automation / operations role with day-to-day operational responsibilities in addition to the automation activities. Whilst the initial focus is reconciliation automation, the role will ultimately extend to a broader middle office automation.

The successful candidate will spend the majority of their time identifying automation opportunities, building and testing solutions, and driving these through to production.

This position requires a strong analytical mindset, excellent communication skills, and the ability to work collaboratively across teams and jurisdictions to translate manual, repetitive processes into scalable, automated solutions.

From a high-level perspective, the core responsibilities that form part of the role are broken down into the following 6 categories:

1. Automation Delivery & Solution Design
2. Reconciliation Process
3. Systems & Data Management
4. System Expertise & Development
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration
6. Risk and Compliance Responsibilities

Your Daily Tasks

Automation Delivery & Solution Design

• Opportunity Identification: Identify manual, repetitive, or high-volume reconciliation tasks (cash, positions, trades) across the team and assess feasibility for automation.
• Solution Design & Build: Design, build, test, and deploy automation solutions (e.g. via UiPath, Xceptor, Claude, or similar platforms) to streamline reconciliation processes.
• Automation Lifecycle Ownership: Own the end-to-end automation lifecycle: opportunity identification, solution design, build, UAT, deployment, and post-implementation monitoring. The role will work with the technology team to ensure that governance standards are adhered to at all times.
• Maintenance & Troubleshooting: Maintain and enhance existing automated reconciliation tools/bots, troubleshooting and resolving issues as they arise.
• Continuous Improvement: Stay current on relevant automation tools and technologies, and recommend new solutions where beneficial.

Reconciliation Process

• Reconciliations: Perform daily, weekly, or monthly reconciliations of cash, positions, and trades
• Break Investigation & Clearance: Investigate and clear reconciliation breaks accordingly.
• Process Familiarity: Maintain sufficient hands-on familiarity with reconciliation processes to ensure automation solutions are practical, accurate, and reflect real operational needs.

Systems & Data Management

• Systems Integration: Partner with the various stakeholders, such as fund accounting and technology teams to ensure automation solutions are fit for purpose and scalable across fund structures.
• Documentation: Document automation workflows, control processes, and exception-handling logic for audit and knowledge-transfer purposes.
• Data Quality: Ensure automated processes correctly handle pricing, instrument/market data, and transaction data across systems.

System Expertise & Development

• Platform Expertise: Develop and maintain expertise in automation platforms such as UiPath and Xceptor, as well as the reconciliation and portfolio accounting systems used across the business.
• System Improvements & Upgrades: Actively contribute to the improvement and optimisation of reconciliation and automation systems. Collaborate with IT and other departments on system upgrades and troubleshooting.
• Continuous Learning: Keep up to date with new developments in automation and reconciliation technologies. Participate in training sessions and workshops to enhance technical skills. Develop broader Middle Office knowledge and skills over time.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with operations, technology, and control teams to prioritise and deliver automation initiatives.
• Knowledge Sharing: Support broader digital transformation and process re-engineering initiatives within the operations function.

Risk and Compliance Responsibilities

• Control Adherence: Ensure automated reconciliation processes adhere to relevant regulatory and control requirements (e.g. SOC).
• Audit Support: Document automation controls, audit trails, and escalation protocols to support compliance and audit reviews.
• Risk Identification: Identify potential risks introduced by automation and implement controls to mitigate them.

Additional Strategic Expectations

• Share insights to enable development of new processes and procedures that create business efficiency and support delivery of client excellence in service.
• Maintain awareness of industry, regulatory, and technology trends relevant to middle office automation.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with operations staff, business users, and project/implementation teams to achieve scalable, elegant automation solutions.

Qualifications

• Degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, Technology, or a related field

Required Skills & Experience

Are you getting excited? We are! Before we get too carried away, there are a few requirements you'll need to check off before you can apply for the position:

• End-to-end trade lifecycle knowledge — including matching & settlement, pricing, instrument/market data, fund accounting, and transaction processing.
• Minimum 5+ years' experience in fund servicing operations within fund administration, asset management, or a related financial services environment.
• Minimum 5+ years' experience in automation within a fund administration or financial services context — building, deploying, and supporting automated workflows.
• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to translate manual processes into scalable automated solutions.
• Ability to work independently, prioritise an automation pipeline, and manage projects end-to-end.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, able to work with operations, technology, and control teams.
• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel and strong skills in Microsoft 365 applications.
• Ability to communicate fluently in English (both spoken and written). Additional language skills may be beneficial.

Desirable Experience

• 10+ years’ experience in fund administration / asset servicing
• 5+ years in process automation
• Ideally, 3+ years in using tools such as Xceptor, UI Path; experience in AI tools such as Claude.
• Experience with reconciliation processes and platforms (e.g. Accurate, Xceptor Recon Hub).
• Basic SQL or other scripting/programming exposure (e.g. Python, VBA) for automation purposes.
• Experience presenting automation business cases or ROI analysis to stakeholders/management.