Lead Charles River Product Manager; CRIMS

Corporate

Title:

VP, Product Management

Onsite

Schedule:

Onsite 4 days per week in Downtown Chicago Loop

* Extensive relocation assistance $$ available for candidates who aren't local*

The Technology team builds and supports the scalable, secure platforms behind the firm's investment operations, including order origination, trade execution, and investment compliance.

This Lead Product Manager owns the technical direction, configuration, and roadmap for the firm's Charles River Investment Management System (CRIMS) and the surrounding order management, execution, and compliance platforms. The role is heavily hands-on. Roughly 75% of the work is direct technical execution inside CRIMS, its databases, and its API. The remaining 25% is road mapping and partnering with stakeholders.

The firm is looking for a true Charles River subject matter expert to act as a change agent: someone who knows the CRIMS suite end to end, can identify the capabilities the firm is underutilizing, and can guide where the platform goes next. The current state of the platform, and the technical problems this person is expected to solve, are detailed below.

This person inherits the environment below and is expected to move it forward. Candidates should be comfortable walking into a system that needs real technical work, not a greenfield build.

• Charles River IMS (CRIMS) is the core platform for order management, trade execution, and investment compliance, running alongside a custom-built, internally developed order entry system.
• Entitlements were implemented in-house, outside the standard Charles River Privileging framework. Proper user groups and privilege structures were never defined in System Administration, so access is granted ad hoc and many users hold privileges spanning multiple, unrelated areas of the application. Standing up a proper user group and Privileging model is an early priority.
• The firm cannot currently execute CRIMS upgrades on its own, which is keeping it from adopting newer platform functionality.
• Charles River Compliance (compliance tests, rules, and alerts and warnings) and the platform's resource allocation capabilities are only partially configured and are not being used to their full potential.
• Day-to-day work reaches directly into the Charles River database and the Charles River API, including hands-on Database Administration, to support configuration, integrations, reporting, and data flows.
• State Street Alpha and its integration with CRIMS is the firm's likely future direction. Experience there is a strong differentiator.

• Serve as the firm's Charles River subject matter expert, with deep, hands-on command of the CRIMS suite, including Manager Workbench (Charles River Manager), Charles River Compliance, the Blotter (Charles River Trader), and System Administration (Privileging and Workflow Design).
• Redesign and remediate Privileging. Define proper user groups and user privilege structures in System Administration to replace the current in-house setup that grants users inconsistent and overly broad access across the application.
• Fully operationalize Charles River Compliance and other CRIMS capabilities that are currently underused, including compliance tests, alerts and warnings, and resource allocation.
• Plan and execute CRIMS upgrades that the firm is currently unable to perform.
• Work directly in the Charles River database and API, including Database Administration, to support configuration, integration, reporting, and troubleshooting.

• Support the firm's custom-built order entry system and evaluate a future migration to native Charles River order management and order entry, including the Blotter (Charles River Trader).
• Maintain and improve workflows across order origination, trade execution, and trading analytics.

• Define and maintain the CRIMS roadmap, surfacing missing functionality and underused capabilities the firm should adopt.
• Act as the change agent for the platform, aligning its direction with the firm's investment and compliance goals.
• Drive transparent, governance-based decisions and integrate stakeholder feedback into the roadmap.

• Partner with executives and traders to gather requirements and configure CRIMS to their needs.
• Balance competing configuration requests across leaders and traders, allowing reasonable customization while pushing back constructively when requests become overly granular or unreasonable.

• Provide technical guidance to the team supporting trading, order origination, and compliance.
• Contribute to Agile delivery, help remove blockers, and drive continuous improvement in tools and workflows.

• 7+ years in product management or technical ownership of trading and investment platforms within asset management.
• Deep, hands-on Charles River (CRIMS) expertise across the suite, including Charles River…