Data Operations Associate

About this role

BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional, intermediary, and individual investors around the world. BlackRock’s mission is to create a better financial future for our clients. We have a responsibility to be the voice of the investor, and we represent each client fairly and equally. Constant communication with a diverse team of partners strengthens us and delivers better results for our clients. Continuous innovation helps us bring the best of BlackRock to our clients. BlackRock offers a range of solutions — from rigorous fundamental and quantitative active management approaches aimed at maximizing outperformance to highly efficient indexing strategies designed to gain broad exposure to the world’s capital markets. Our clients can access our investment solutions through a variety of product structures, including individual and institutional separate accounts, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles, and the industry-leading iShares® ETFs.

About this role

The Reference and Market Data Team is responsible for ensuring the reference and market data needs of BlackRock and the clients of BlackRock Solutions are fulfilled with accurate, complete and timely data.

As an Associate Data Steward on the Reference and Market Data Team, you will support a growing area in a dynamic and challenging environment. 

Day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Work closely with data customers both internally and externally to stay abreast of new and evolving business requirements and market trends in order to align our data content with business needs

• Provide data solutions, insights and expertise in response to changing business needs, market events, regulatory change and new financial products.

• Data stewards are required to profile and analyze data to ensure content meets business requirements while being compliant with the various dimensions of data quality as outlined in our data quality policy.

• Direct responsibility of drafting of business requirements and creation of data feed prototypes for data feed development.

• Data Stewards are expected to conduct and coordinate UAT on content related data feed / technology changes that involve modifications to the way data is extracted, transformed or loaded.

• Design data quality checks and performance metrics to assess data health and detect deficiencies and improvement with our data sources or internal data processes.

• Provide Level 2 / Level 3 support for level 1 operations teams to facilitate troubleshooting or respond to content related inquires that require more advanced skills or specialized content knowledge.

• Active engagement with key product stakeholders to ensure client data experience is aligned and exceeding expectations

• Build and maintain high performing relationships with our data vendors & core internal development partners to achieve a comprehensive, quality data offering

• Ongoing engagement with technology on ways to innovate and deliver high quality data solutions through robust storage, maintenance, management and delivery methods.

This function will expose the Data Steward to a wide range of BlackRock’s and BlackRock Solutions’ tools and businesses and will require him/her to work closely with internal clients such as portfolio management, account management, operations, BlackRock Solutions as well as external users of security data.  The critical responsibilities of this position are at the core of the Reference and Market Data Team’s objective of providing timely, accurate and complete data. 

Qualifications / Requirements:

• Candidate must possess and demonstrate working knowledge of financial markets and general knowledge of the entire investment landscape.

• Candidate is expected to think critically about complex business challenges and possess strong problem solving skills in order to deliver holistic solutions.

• Candidate must have enthusiasm for, and comfort with, working in a high pressure and fast pace environment while maintaining quality and the integrity of investment data.

• Candidate must be able to work in both an entrepreneurial and team-oriented environment.

• Candidate should have comfort with working with technical tools such as SQL, Python, Jupyter Notebook, Unix commands, Hadoop, Spark SQL, Tableau, etc.

• Candidate must have excellent communication skills to enable clear articulation while working with internal and external clients.

• Candidate must have strong organizational skills and demonstrate project management experi