Operations Associate

Position:
Operations Associate - Financial Services

Location:

Chicago, IL (must live in the Chicago area or relocate before start)

Schedule:

On site, five days a week at our River North office

Type:
Full-Time, direct Edge Clear employee with benefits

Experience:

2 to 3 years in a role where accuracy was the job (operations, accounting, billing, data analysis, fund or brokerage operations, payments, or revenue operations)

Target start:
December 2026

About Edge Clear:

Edge Clear is a Chicago futures brokerage that is pending approval to become a non-clearing Futures Commission Merchant (FCM). We are a small team building the operation from the ground up, so the person in this seat helps shape how it runs and will eventually own the clearing operations function.

We are seeking a detail-driven Operations Associate to join Edge Clear as we launch our FCM. This position reports to our Executive Director and is designed to grow into Senior Operations Associate and then Clearing Operations Manager.

This is a direct, stable career position at Edge Clear, built around training you into a leadership role in clearing operations in the booming financial markets industry.

The Role:

You will make sure every trade, position and dollar agrees across our back office system, our clearing firms and our execution platforms, every trading day. When something does not match, you find out why and take steps to balance it. Before launch, you will learn back office system and our clearing process in depth through user acceptance testing and end-to-end rehearsals, then take ownership of daily reconciliation and the back office after go-live.

We do not expect you to know futures clearing yet. We will teach you. What we need from day one is the discipline you already use to keep a system of record clean and the habit of chasing every break until it closes.

Key Responsibilities:

Daily Reconciliation and Breaks:

• Reconcile back office system against each clearing firm's daily statements and against execution platform records, at customer account level
• Log every break, research the cause and work it to resolution with the clearing firm, the Trade Desk or Risk team
• Keep a clear break log and escal ?

Back Office System of Record:

• Set up and maintain customer accounts, commission schedules and fee schedules, the way you would administer a CRM
• Keep account data clean and consistent with account opening records and the clearing firms' records
• Record deposits and withdrawals as processed (you do not send or approve money movements)
• Check daily and monthly customer statements before they go out

Fees, Invoices and Support:

• Check clearing, exchange and NFA fees and vendor invoices against contracted rates
• Track contract expirations and first notice dates with the Trade Desk
• Pull records for Finance, Compliance, auditors and the NFA when asked

Before Launch:

• Learn QBO and take part in user acceptance testing with the vendor
• Help write procedures, checklists and break handling runbooks
• Take part in end-to-end rehearsals before go-live

Required Skills &

Qualifications:

• Experience:
  
  2 to 3 years in a role where getting details exactly right was the job.
• Reconciliation:
  Hands-on daily or weekly reconciliation of data between two or more systems, with examples of breaks you found and closed.
• Systems:
  Experience administering a system of record such as Salesforce, Hub Spot, Zoho, Net Suite or a similar back end, including setting up records, maintaining fields and rules, imports and exports, and keeping data clean.
• Excel and Data Analysis:
  Lookups, pivot tables, variance analysis and building your own reconciliation checks.
• Communication:
  Clear, concise writing. You can explain a break and its fix in a few lines.
• Education:
  
  Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Licensing:
  Willingness to sit the Series 3 exam within your first year (sponsored by Edge Clear).
• Completing the circle:
  You do not leave a break open. You close it, document it and make sure it does not happen again.
• Coachable: A growth attitude and an open mind to coaching and feedback.

Other Preferred

Skills:

• Back office clearing systems:
  Hands-on experience with QBO, GMI or ION back office.
• Brokerage experience:
  Work at a broker-dealer, FCM or other financial brokerage, or FINRA licenses.
• Trading and/or investing experience is welcome.

Growth Path:

Progression is based on milestones, not time served:

• Run the daily three-way reconciliation on your own, with breaks resolved before the next trading…