Market Surveillance Manager

Job Description

As Market Surveillance Team Manager, you will lead a specialist team responsible for identifying, investigating, and escalating potential market abuse and suspicious trading activity. You will ensure the firm meets its regulatory obligations under MAR and FCA requirements, while continuously strengthening the effectiveness, efficiency, and maturity of the market surveillance function.

This is a hands‑on leadership role combining technical expertise, people management, and stakeholder engagement within a regulated investment environment.

• Lead, develop, and motivate a team of Market Surveillance Analysts, embedding high performance, accountability, and professional development.
• Own performance management, coaching, succession planning, and Training & Competence requirements.
• Manage workflow planning, alert volumes, and resourcing to ensure SLAs and regulatory deadlines are consistently met.

• Oversee the timely and accurate review of surveillance alerts, ensuring appropriate escalation of potential market abuse in line with policy and the STOR regime.
• Provide quality assurance over investigations, ensuring clear rationale, robust documentation, and defensible decision‑making.
• Maintain and enhance surveillance system calibration to improve detection capability and reduce false positives.

• Ensure ongoing compliance with FCA expectations, including SYSC obligations and Market Abuse Regulation.
• Produce and review MI, trend analysis, and regulatory reporting for senior management, governance forums, and regulators.
• Maintain strong audit readiness through consistent application of policies, procedures, and controls.

• Identify and deliver process improvements and system enhancements to strengthen surveillance capability.
• Partner with Technology and Data teams on system upgrades, new functionality, and innovation, including AI‑driven alerting and communications surveillance.
• Contribute to risk assessments, thematic reviews, and horizon scanning to ensure emerging risks are identified and mitigated.

• Act as a trusted subject matter expert for internal stakeholders including Compliance, Risk, Dealing, and senior management.
• Serve as a key point of contact for regulatory engagement relating to market surveillance activity.
• Deliver training and guidance to first‑line teams to improve awareness of market abuse risks and controls.

• Strong working knowledge of Market Abuse Regulation, STOR obligations, and FCA supervisory expectations.
• Proven experience in market surveillance or financial crime within an investment platform, broker, or similar regulated environment.
• Demonstrated people management experience, with the ability to lead, develop, and deliver through teams.
• Strong analytical capability with experience interpreting complex trading data and identifying suspicious patterns.
• Confident communicator, able to engage credibly with senior stakeholders and regulators.
• Experience with market surveillance systems and data analytics tools, such as Liquid Metrix, Comply Advantage, or similar platforms.

AJ Bell is one of the fastest‑growing investment platform businesses in the UK offering an award‑winning range of solutions that caters for everyone, from professional financial advisers to DIY investors with little to no experience. We have over 644,000 customers using our award‑winning platform propositions to manage assets totalling more than £103.3 billion. Our customers trust us with their investments, and by continuously striving to make investing easier, we aim to help even more people take control of their financial futures.

Having listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in December 2018, AJ Bell is now a FTSE 250 company.

Headquartered in Manchester with offices in central London and Bristol, we now have over 1,500 employees and have been named one of the UK’s ‘Best 100 Companies to Work For’ for six consecutive years and in 2025 named a Great Place to Work®.

At AJ Bell…