Latest Jobs at Prescient

Purpose of role:

• You will build the systems that decide whether our hardest numbers are true - and then you will own that truth.
• This role owns the truth of the firm’s instrument, pricing and exposure data: the classification of every instrument, the validation of pricing and exposure, and the translation of regulatory and mandate intent into data that stands up to scrutiny. The role exists because, as a systematic investment manager, our value is created in the layer where raw market data becomes the classified instruments, valuations and exposures our clients and regulators rely on, and today much of that judgment lives informally, in spreadsheets and in people’s heads. This role turns it into governed, automated systems, and then remains accountable for what they produce.
• The shape of the role matters: it begins as a greenfield build (designing and standing up the tools, checks and classification logic) and matures into standing accountability: being the person who can say, and show, that these numbers are true, long after the systems that produce them run themselves. If your satisfaction ends the day a system ships, this is not your seat.
• The remit is deliberately narrow and deep: not the pipelines, not the platform, not the investment decisions, but the meaning and integrity of the numbers, and the systems that keep them honest. A small remit with real authority behind it.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Design and build the systems that classify instruments, roll credit ratings forward, and validate pricing and exposure across asset classes: automated, governed, and durable rather than one-off scripts, built on the firm’s cloud data platform (AWS, GitHub, Airflow orchestration) alongside the technology team.
• Translate regulatory and mandate intent into defensible data: interpret what a mandate, regulation or classification standard requires and encode it as auditable definitions and checks.
• Exercise the daily judgment the systems cannot hold: new-instrument classification calls, valuation edge cases, and the decision that a result is reasonable, not merely computed.
• Design the controls that catch silent failures (the plausible, confident, wrong number that no alarm flags) before they reach a client, an auditor or the board.
• Own the data contracts and vendor relationships for critical instrument and pricing sources, so a bad upstream number dies at the door rather than in a client report.
• Document the reasoning behind every system (assumptions, scope, what each check does and does not watch) so another capable person could repair it, not merely run it.
• Certify and stand behind the numbers when questioned, including to auditors, governance forums and clients: when a number is challenged, produce the evidence that it is right.

Required experience:

• 5–8 years in quantitative markets, risk or investment-data roles, at a level of owning outcomes rather than executing tasks.
• Demonstrated instrument-valuation and classification judgment across asset classes.
• Working fluency in credit and market risk and regulatory-reporting concepts (rating methodologies, capital and risk frameworks).
• Quantitative depth (derivative pricing, risk modelling) sufficient to judge whether a result is reasonable, not merely arithmetically correct.
• Strong programming: Python essential; SQL; others (C#, R, SAS) advantageous. A track record of building durable, well-structured data tools.
• Experience with modern data platforms advantageous: cloud warehouses or lakehouses (AWS), version-controlled delivery (Git), pipeline orchestration (e.g. Airflow), data-quality frameworks.
• Data-governance and stewardship experience: definitions, lineage, controls; caring that a number means the same thing everywhere it appears.

Required Qualifications:

• A postgraduate qualification in a quantitative discipline (quantitative risk management, financial engineering, statistics or similar), or equivalent depth demonstrated in practice.

Key competencies:

• Ownership and accountability. Builds things meant to last and to be owned, not handed off and forgotten; takes personal responsibility for a number being right years after the tool shipped.
• Sceptical rigour. Suspicious of their own automation; treats the quiet failure as the dangerous one and designs for it.
• Judgment under ambiguity. Comfortable making and defending the call where the rule runs out: a new instrument, an unusual structure, a contested interpretation.
• Legibility and communication. Explains reasoning as naturally as writing code; documents so that systems survive their author; communicates a technical judgment to a non-technical audience without loss.
• Business-first orientation. Starts from why the business needs a thing before reaching for a tool.
• AI-augmented engineering. Uses modern AI tooling as a genuine force multiplier while understanding, deeply, everything shipped with its help.

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Purpose of role:

• This second-line compliance role involves leading, supporting, and coordinating compliance activities across for both Prescient Fund Services and Prescient Management Company. The Compliance Manager will manage the regulatory compliance team and work alongside the Head of Compliance and assist the team in discharging their responsibility to comply with applicable legislative and regulatory requirements through the provision of compliance services and to identify, assess, manage, monitor and report regulatory compliance risks facing the organisation.

Duties and responsibilities:
Manage a team of Compliance Officers/Administrators.

• Oversee licensing requirements and regulatory obligations (including reporting, applying for new business products, etc.) for the relevant licensed entity and regulatory approved individuals, while ensuring that compliance activity takes account of all relevant legislation and FSCA/FIC/Information Regulator activities.
• Serve as the appointed FAIS Compliance Officer for a CAT I FSP (intermediary only), and/or FIC MLRO and Compliance Officer and/or S13B Compliance Officer.
• Drive, oversee and maintain the development and monitoring of Compliance Risk Management and Compliance Monitoring plans
• Identify compliance focus areas and assists the business to build effective CRMP’s and documenting those in the risk management system
• Assist the Head of Compliance in the preparation of reports to regulatory authorities, and internal executive committees and boards.
• Maintain appropriate written procedures to ensure compliance with applicable legislation, regulations and group policies, and to monitor adherence to such procedures in order to demonstrate to the applicable Regulators that the business seeks to adequately manage its compliance risks.
• Promote a positive compliance culture and risk awareness.
• Providing assistance and support in satisfying staff training and development needs and plans in relation to new regulations and legislation.

Required experience:

• 5+ years compliance experience in a financial services environment
• FAIS registered Compliance Officer for Cat I.
• Strong working knowledge of the South African financial service's regulatory framework.

Required Qualifications:

• Relevant tertiary qualification, ideally in Law or Compliance and Risk Management.

Key competencies:

• Strong working knowledge and experience within a regulatory compliance role in the financial services industry.
• Strong work ethic, and ability to work under time pressure around submission deadline times.
• Risk-Based Thinking: Skilled in applying a risk-based approach to compliance monitoring, reporting, and decision-making.
• Proficiency in AI integration to increase productivity and reduce risk.
• Strong problem-solving ability and critical thinking 
• Ability to work well independently as well as in a team environment.
• Self-starter who is self-driven and self-directed.
• Honesty and integrity.