Middle Office Specialist Islamic Finance & Global Markets

MIDDLE OFFICE SALES – ISLAMIC FINANCE & GLOBAL MARKETS

Role Summary

The Middle Office Specialist in Islamic Finance serves as the critical operational bridge between Global Market Sales and Structuring team in Dubai and the operations.

This role is responsible for the end-to-end coordination, operational control, trade validation, and lifecycle management of Sharia-compliant global market transactions (OTC and structured products). The successful candidate will ensure that all transactions strictly adhere to the legal and operational guardrails set by the bank, while maintaining pristine transaction management in the systems to comply with sharia policy

Key Responsibilities

Operational Duties / Business-as-Usual (BAU)

In line with the sharia principles - the role will encompass by order of importance:

• Commodity Murabaha (Tawarruq) Coordination: This is the key aspect of the role: work directly with commodity brokers on trade orders when payoff dates kick in and ensure that they are dully exectuted in line with our Islamic finance policy.
• Trade Booking Validation: Verify complex Islamic structured products, ensuring the correct mapping of shadow conventional risk tickets to their corresponding Islamic term-specific wrappers
• Trade confirmation: drafting and issuance of execution of the relevant trade confirmations including but not limited to Designated Future Transactions (DFT) confirmations, Undertakings or transaction schedules to generate. Control and validate with external counterparts
• Settlement & Post-Trade Lifecycle Monitoring: Control with operational teams that all cash flows are settled and pursuant to commodities trades, promises or certificate transfers.
• Reconciliations: Reconcile daily cash and securities balances as well conventional legs with Murabaha transactions. Revert timely to any specific audit request to check sharia conformity for the transactions. Maintain an auditable track record of bookings, confirmations and legal documents collected during the Islamic deal lifecycle
• Knowledge maintenance: Every time a new Sharia-compliant structured product is validated internally, immediately draft and integrate its bespoke end-to-end operational booking and settlement workflow. Document and maintain the Service Level Agreement with bank internal clients and customers for all key operational BAU processes and pinpoint all exceptions for client and/or products

Liaison and Risk Management

• Assist Structuring team for external Sharia auditors and internal compliance.
• Responsible for record-keeping of all Islamic operational aspects. Auditable and accessible records must be well kept for any ad-hoc or recurring request
• Lead System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for new system modules, system upgrades, or bespoke Islamic fintech wrappers

Qualifications and Education Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Banking, Islamic Jurisprudence, or related discipline.
• Min 6 years of relevant experience in operations specifically on global markets activities (IRS, FX Der, Repo, Structured deposits).
• Hands-on experience with core banking systems such as Murex, Calypso, or Kondor+
• Nice to have: Proficiency in Python or Alteryx for developing automated reconciliation workflows. Dataviz tool experience (Power BI, Tableau) is also a plus

Skills and Competencies

• Islamic Product Knowledge: Proficient operational understanding of Murabaha, Wa'ad, etc.
• Comfortable to explain specificities of popular Islamic products (PRS, Islamic CCS, etc.) and/or key player markets (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia)
• Native or professional-grade fluency in English is mandatory. Conversational or business-level Arabic is a strong advantage
• Automation Mindset: Proactively identify opportunities for automation within daily processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual errors
• Meticulous Attention to Detail: Essential for managing multi-step timestamped execution
• Collaborative Mindset: Capable of working effectively in a fast-paced environment across Front Office traders, Back Office settlement, and external commodity brokers.