Senior Reference Data Associate with Nordic Language Skills

Job Overview

This position combines expertise in financial data engineering with knowledge of fixed income markets. The new hire will undergo a structured three-month onboarding program, starting with supervised parsing and validation of documents and progressing towards independent management of securities following established standards. Training includes competency tests, accuracy benchmarks, and productivity targets.

Training and Knowledge Development

The onboarding curriculum covers high-level insights into complex security structures managed by senior team members, along with reference data use cases for clients. The goal is for the candidate to distinguish necessary legal and financial terminology for clients from non-essential jargon and to identify emerging financing methods. Applying this knowledge, the associate will make logical decisions about the relevance of information and determine subsequent actions to ensure excellent client satisfaction.

Fixed Income Market Context

The fixed income market includes over two million active securities. ICE Data Services provides reference data on these securities, which clients use for trading decisions, settlements, portfolio management, risk analysis, and back-office functions. Internal teams such as Evaluated Pricing, Indexing, and Analytics depend on this data for tasks like determining evaluated prices, index composition, and analytical calculations supporting both internal and external clients.

Key Responsibilities

• Extract and transform data from structured and unstructured sources including legal prospectuses, regulatory filings, trustee reports, and vendor feeds into standardized reference data fields.
• Navigate complex and ambiguous scenarios such as edge cases and unusual legal language using rule-based and judgment-driven methods.
• Perform multiple validation layers ensuring data completeness, consistency, and compliance with business rules to meet accuracy and timing standards.
• Investigate anomalies in data, contribute to error classification, and develop resolution procedures.
• Monitor data pipelines to detect drifts, gaps, or outliers and escalate systemic issues with proper documentation.
• Address client inquiries by providing clear, structured written responses including issue restatement, methodologies used, and resolution reasoning.
• Work collaboratively with internal stakeholders to clarify data needs and identify upstream data gaps.
• Act as a knowledge resource for junior analysts regarding data interpretation questions.
• Conduct focused research and engage directly with issuers, underwriters, and trustees to obtain reliable documentation.
• Maintain detailed records of source documentation and metadata supporting compliance and reproducibility.
• Identify inefficiencies in workflows and suggest process improvements or automation opportunities, estimating their impact.
• Develop scripts and tools to streamline repetitive data extraction and validation tasks.
• Participate in analytical projects like data quality dashboards, trend analysis, and executive reporting.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in finance, economics, computer science, mathematics, or related quantitative fields.
• Strong Excel abilities including advanced formulas and pivot tables.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, or comparable data handling and automation tools.
• Familiarity with AI technologies to assist data processing and analysis.
• Demonstrated skill in deriving actionable insights from complex legal and financial documentation.
• Excellent writing skills for preparing client and stakeholder-facing documentation.
• Fluent in English and at least one Nordic language; additional languages are beneficial.
• Exceptional attention to detail with consistent accuracy under time constraints.

Preferred Experience

• Background in fixed income operations, reference data, market data, or managing financial data.
• Knowledge of fixed income instruments such as bonds, structured products, municipal securities, ABS/MBS, and convertibles.
• Understanding of data governance principles, including data lineage and master data management.

Compensation and Benefits

The annual base salary for this role ranges between 34,000 and 38,000 EUR exclusive of incentive compensation. Remuneration is based on objective, gender-neutral criteria including skills, qualifications, and experience. Full-time employees at ICE are entitled to comprehensive employee benefits including healthcare coverage.