Senior Derivatives Analyst in Slough

Company Overview: Hartree Partners is a leading global merchant commodities firm specialising in energy, commodities and associated industries. Jointly owned by senior management and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, LP, Hartree has over 28 years of experience in proprietary trading and principal investments. The firm employs over 4,600 individuals worldwide.

Job Summary: The Senior Derivatives Analyst sits at the heart of our Commodities & Equities Operations team, supporting derivative margining across exchange-cleared and OTC products. The successful candidate works on the daily processes that keep our trading activity funded, reconciled, and risk-controlled, while also contributing to the automation roadmap that is reshaping how Operations runs.

Key Responsibilities & Duties:

• Cash Management & Cash Reconciliation: Monitor daily cash movements across broker and clearing accounts, ensuring funding is in place to meet margin calls. Reconcile internal cash ledgers against external statements, investigate breaks, and escalate funding shortfalls to Treasury.
• Daily Margin Excess / Deficit Reconciliation: Calculate and reconcile margin requirements against posted collateral on a T+1 basis. Identify excesses that can be released and deficits that require funding and coordinate same-day movements with FCMs and clearing counterparties.
• Relationship Management with Internal & External Counterparties: Act as a daily point of contact for FCMs, clearing brokers, exchanges and other counterparties. Build constructive working relationships, manage queries professionally, and ensure issues are resolved within tight market deadlines.
• Position Reconciliation (T-1 & T-0): Reconcile firm positions against broker and exchange records on both a previous-day and intraday basis. Investigate and resolve trade breaks by liaising with Middle Office, Front Office, Risk, Brokers and FCMs, ensuring books and records are accurate before margin and P&L cycles run.
• Process Automation (Python / SQL): Run, monitor and improve existing operational processes. Identify manual, repetitive workflows and rebuild them using Python – reducing risk, freeing up capacity, and embedding controls into the new tooling.
• Collateral Management & Initial Margin Optimisation: Analyse initial margin drivers across FCMs, exchanges, products and entities, supporting margin optimisation initiatives, collateral strategy, funding efficiency and senior management reporting.
• Balance Sheet Optimisation: Partner with Treasury, Finance and the desks to identify opportunities to optimise the firm’s use of balance sheet – for example, through compression, collateral substitution, and more efficient allocation of cash and securities.
• Trader Onboardings: Coordinate the operational onboarding of new traders and trading entities, including account setup with FCMs and exchanges, system configuration, trading platforms and ensuring all margining and reconciliation flows are in place from day one.
• Position Limit Management: Monitor exchange and internal position limits across products and accounts. Support requests for limit changes and maintain accurate records for regulatory and internal reporting.

Requirements: education, competencies & skills:

• 3–5 years’ experience in Derivatives Operations, Middle Office, Clearing, Treasury, FCM, Commodities Operations or a similar control-focused environment.
• Strong understanding of exchange-cleared derivatives, including futures, options, margining, settlement, broker statements, position reconciliation and cash/collateral flows.
• Coding ability: hands-on experience with Python, ideally including Pandas and Openpyxl. The candidate should be comfortable reading, writing and debugging code, and motivated to automate real operational workflows.
• Strong Excel skills and confidence working with large datasets, reconciliations and exception-based reporting.
• Counterparty-facing communication: confidence dealing with FCMs, clearing brokers, exchanges, Middle Office, Front Office, Risk, Treasury and Technology.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to explain margin movements, cash requirements, breaks and process issues clearly.
• Genuine interest in building a long-term career within Operations, with a focus on controls, scalability, automation and operational excellence.

Preferred Requirements:

• Understanding of exchange-cleared and OTC trades – Familiarity with the lifecycle differences between listed and bilateral trades, including clearing, margining and settlement mechanics.
• Understanding of derivatives – Working knowledge of futures, options and swaps – their economics, payoffs, and the operational considerations associated with each.
• Product knowledge – Exposure to commodities markets including Crude, Ags, Gas, Power and Metals, and an awareness of the contract specifications and conventions that drive day-to-day operations.
• Prior experience in an Operations, Middle Office, Treasury, Clearing, FCM or Commodities environment.

What’s on offer: Direct exposure to a fast-paced derivatives trading environment, hands-on experience with the full margining lifecycle, and the opportunity to deliver tangible automation projects in Python and SQL. You will work alongside experienced Operations, Risk and Trading professionals, and build a network across the front-to-back chain.