Markets Operations interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Tell me about a project where you owned a process, a control, or a problem investigation end-to-end.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why markets operations — why not the front office, or another part of the bank?
5. Trade support, middle office, settlements, or reg reporting — which seat do you want, and why?
6. Why the firm?
7. How would you describe the firm's post-trade platform and where you'd add value?
8. What recent regulatory or post-trade change has affected the firm's markets ops, and how would you have approached it?

Technical concepts to master

• Trade lifecycle — front to back

  Execution + booking · Confirmation + affirmation · Allocation + clearing · Settlement (DvP) + reconciliation · Regulatory reporting + P&L feed

• Reconciliation + break management

  The three core recs · Break taxonomy · STP rate + exception aging · Root-cause investigation

• Settlement + clearing infrastructure

  CCP clearing + novation · CSDs + DvP settlement · CLS for FX · Margin + collateral

• Operational risk + controls

  Three lines of defence · RCSA — Risk + Control Self-Assessment · KRIs + KCIs · Op-risk events + near-misses

Practical drills

• Walk me through the full trade lifecycle for a the sector desk trade from execution to reporting. Name the systems, the infrastructure, the cycle, and where breaks could arise at each stage.
• It's T+1. A $50m cash equities trade is showing as unconfirmed in the affirmation system and the settlement instruction has been rejected by the custodian. Walk me through how you'd investigate and resolve it before the settlement cut-off.
• Your team owns the daily reconciliation between the firm's books and the CCP for a cleared derivatives portfolio. STP is 88%; the remaining 12% are manual touches taking 3 hours per day. A recent audit flagged that the manual touches lack a maker-checker control. Walk me through how you'd diagnose the issue, fix it, and measure success.

Smart-question anchors

• Seat + structure — trade support / MO / settlements / reg reporting, which products + desks the seat covers
• Post-trade platform + tech stack — in-house systems, vendor platforms, the firm's automation / DLT agenda
• STP + exception metrics — how the team measures performance and where the biggest break clusters sit
• Regulatory change agenda — T+1, CSDR, EMIR REFIT, MiFID II / MiFIR review and how the team is preparing
• Mobility paths from ops — to risk, finance, change, compliance, or front-office support

Sourced from

Wall Street Oasis — Middle Office / Operations interview threads · Mergers & Inquisitions — Middle Office vs Back Office vs Front Office · DTCC — Settlement and Clearing Education · ISDA — Derivatives Operations and Lifecycle Guides · Basel Committee — Operational Risk + Sound Practices