Lead Consultant – Commodities

Job description

**Role Overview** We are seeking an experienced Lead Capital Markets Consultant to lead functional consulting and solution delivery for commodities trading and risk management platform implementations. The candidate will bring deep knowledge of physical and financial commodity trading, extensive experience in Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM) or Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) systems, and a proven track record of delivering complex technology transformation programmes. The role involves leading business and functional workstreams, defining target-state processes and solution architectures in collaboration with technical architects, driving platform configuration and integration, and ensuring alignment between business requirements and technology solutions. The successful candidate will act as a trusted advisor to business and technology stakeholders, including traders, risk managers, operations, scheduling, finance, and senior management. They will be expected to take ownership of implementation outcomes, manage delivery risks, mentor consultants, and contribute to business development and practice growth where applicable. **Key Responsibilities** - **Commodities Domain Leadership** - Demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of physical and financial commodities trading across one or more asset classes, including crude oil, refined products, natural gas, power, LNG, metals, or agricultural commodities. - Advise clients on end-to-end commodities trading processes, including deal capture, contract management, scheduling, logistics, inventory, valuation, risk management, invoicing, settlement, and accounting. - Understand complex commodity contracts, structured deals, pricing formulas, market indices, optionality, delivery obligations, and financial instruments. - Provide functional expertise across trading, middle-office, risk, operations, scheduling, and finance processes. - Analyse existing operating models, identify process inefficiencies and control gaps, and recommend scalable target-state solutions. - Advise on industry practices and emerging requirements affecting commodities trading technology and operating models. - **CTRM/ETRM Platform Implementation Leadership** - Lead functional delivery for end-to-end CTRM/ETRM implementation, transformation, upgrade, or platform migration programmes. - Drive discovery, requirements definition, fit-gap assessments, solution design, configuration strategy, testing, deployment, and post-go-live stabilisation. - Define functional scope, workstream plans, dependencies, deliverables, and acceptance criteria in collaboration with programme leadership. - Translate complex business requirements into scalable functional designs aligned with standard platform capabilities and enterprise architecture. - Challenge requirements and proposed customisations to balance business needs, platform capability, maintainability, and total cost of ownership. - Oversee configuration of deal capture, contracts, pricing, market data, valuation, risk, scheduling, settlements, and reporting workflows, as relevant to the selected platform. - Lead functional design reviews and ensure consistency across business processes, platform configuration, integrations, and downstream systems. - Manage functional dependencies across multiple workstreams, regions, commodities, and business units. - Support vendor evaluations, platform selection, proof-of-concept exercises, and solution demonstrations where required. - **Solution Design and Business Transformation** - Lead workshops with senior business stakeholders to define business requirements, strategic objectives, and target operating models. - Develop current-state assessments, future-state process designs, functional solution blueprints, and implementation roadmaps. - Define end-to-end business process flows and functional design principles across physical and financial trading. - Identify opportunities to standardise processes, reduce manual intervention, strengthen controls, and improve operational efficiency. - Assess the impact of platform changes on trading, risk, operations, finance, data, and reporting functions. - Work closely with solution and technical architects to ensure that functional designs align with integration, data, security, and enterprise architecture principles. - Drive resolution of complex functional design decisions and cross-functional process conflicts. - Establish requirements traceability and ensure alignment between business objectives, functional designs, testing, and implementation outcomes. - **Commodities Risk, Valuation, and Trade Lifecycle** - Provide functional oversight for trade capture, contract management, position management, mark-to-market (MtM) valuation, profit and loss (P&L), and exposure reporting. - Guide the design of pricing methodologies, market data curves, price index mappings, valuation controls, and risk reporting processes. - Support implementation of risk management capabilities covering market risk, commodity price exposure, counterparty exposure, and relevant credit risk workflows. - Oversee physical trading processes involving inventory, scheduling, nominations, logistics, delivery, and volume reconciliation, where applicable. - Lead functional design for settlements, invoicing, payment processing, accounting events, and financial reconciliations. - Ensure consistency of trade and risk data across CTRM/ETRM, market data, ERP, accounting, and enterprise reporting systems. - Support investigation of complex valuation, P&L, position, and trade reconciliation issues. - **Integration, Data Migration, and Technical Coordination** - Define functional integration requirements between CTRM/ETRM platforms and exchanges, brokers, market data providers, logistics systems, ERP, treasury, risk, and reporting platforms. - Oversee source-to-target data mapping, interface specifications, business validation rules, and reconciliation approaches. - Lead functional assessment of legacy data migration, including trades, contracts, counterparties, market data, positions, and relevant historical information. - Collaborate with technical teams on API specifications, interface design, data models, and integration testing. - Establish data quality, completeness, consistency, and control requirements for critical trading and risk information. - Review migration and reconciliation results, resolve business data issues, and support migration sign-off. - Ensure functional readiness across upstream and downstream systems before production deployment. - **Programme Delivery and Governance** - Own assigned functional workstreams and ensure delivery against agreed scope, milestones, quality standards, and budget commitments. - Develop workstream plans, resource estimates, delivery dependencies, RAID logs, and stakeholder reporting. - Lead functional design reviews, solution walkthroughs, and implementation governance forums. - Manage scope changes, competing priorities, escalations, and delivery risks. - Coordinate business, technology, testing, data, architecture, and vendor teams throughout the implementation lifecycle. - Drive SIT, UAT, end-to-end testing, performance validation where applicable, cutover rehearsals, and production-readiness assessments. - Lead go-live planning, business readiness, cutover execution, and post-implementation stabilisation activities. - Establish quality assurance practices and ensure that project artefacts meet agreed delivery standards. - **Senior Stakeholder and Client Management** - Act as a trusted functional advisor to trading heads, risk leadership, operations management, finance stakeholders, and programme sponsors. - Facilitate senior-level discussions to align business priorities, resolve design decisions, and obtain stakeholder approvals. - Communicate complex business and technical matters clearly to executive, business, and technology audiences. - Manage expectations, negotiate priorities, and proactively address stakeholder concerns. - Present recommendations, solution options, implementation risks, and delivery progress to senior stakeholders. - Build productive relationships with platform vendors, systems integrators, and client leadership teams. - **Team Leadership and Practice Development** - Lead, mentor, and coach business analysts, functional consultants, and junior workstream members. - Review requirements, functional designs, test artefacts, and deliverables produced by the team. - Define reusable implementation methodologies, templates, functional accelerators, and domain knowledge assets. - Contribute to proposal development, effort estimation, solution presentations, and client pursuits where applicable. - Identify opportunities for platform optimisation, additional consulting services, and follow-on transformation initiatives. - Support capability development and knowledge sharing across commodities and CTRM/ETRM consulting teams. **Essential Requirements** - 10–15 years of relevant experience in commodities trading technology, CTRM/ETRM consulting, commodities business transformation, or enterprise platform implementation. - Proven experience leading functional workstreams or major delivery components within complex CTRM/ETRM implementations. - Strong understanding of physical and/or financial commodities trading and the end-to-end trade lifecycle. - Hands-on experience with at least one established CTRM/ETRM platform, such as Openlink Endur, RightAngle, Allegro, ION Commodities, Eka, or an equivalent solution. - Demonstrated expertise in requirements management, fit-gap analysis, functional solution design, platform configuration, and implementation delivery. - Experience coordinating multiple business and technology teams across implementation, integration, testing, and deployment. - Strong knowledge of commodity risk, valuation, market data, position management, P&L, and settlement processes relevant to the candidate's asset-class specialisation. - Experience with data migration, integration requirements, reconciliation, SIT/UAT, cutover, and go-live support. - Excellent client-facing communication, stakeholder management, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. - Ability to manage delivery risks, resolve complex functional issues, and provide guidance to less experienced consultants. **Preferred Skills** - Experience with multi-commodity, multi-entity, or multi-region CTRM/ETRM implementations. - Exposure to platform selection, vendor assessment, solution architecture, or large-scale transformation roadmaps. - Strong understanding of integration patterns, APIs, data architecture, and ERP connectivity. - Familiarity with SQL and data analysis tools for investigation, validation, and reconciliation. - Experience with Agile and Waterfall delivery methods and programme governance. - Experience in consulting firms, systems integrators, trading houses, energy companies, or financial institutions. - Experience with commercial estimation, proposal development, and client relationship management.