Trade Surveillance Analyst

About The Role

We’re not looking for someone to clear a queue. We’re looking for an experienced surveillance analyst who has ground through alerts but never stopped asking, “Why did this really fire, and is it actually a problem?” DriveWealth operates at the frontier of embedded investing — a global B2B platform powering fractional equities, options, and multi-asset trading for partners worldwide. Our surveillance function sits at the intersection of that complexity and the regulatory obligations that come with it. We want someone who treats AI as a collaborator rather than a crutch, and who is genuinely curious about how markets work.

You’ve done the work. You’ve sat in the alert queue and dispositioned real cases — but you did it thinking, not just checking boxes. You prioritize rigorous analysis over rote processing; you investigate to find the truth, not just to close the alert, and you’re skeptical of your own first conclusions. At DriveWealth, the surveillance perimeter is wide — fractional share fulfillment, options activity, multi-venue US equities flow, and a global partner base — and we need someone who finds that complexity interesting, not overwhelming.

At its core, this is a trade surveillance role. You will monitor trading activity across equities, options, and ETFs for potential violations of securities laws and firm policy — reviewing alerts generated by our surveillance platform, conducting investigations, and producing written dispositions that document your analysis and conclusions. You will contribute to the ongoing calibration of surveillance scenarios and thresholds, track relevant regulatory developments, and support the Compliance team in responding to inquiries from FINRA, the SEC, and the exchanges. The alerts will be real, the regulatory stakes will be real, and the work requires the kind of precision and professional judgment that holds up under scrutiny.

What You’ll Do

• Investigate, don’t just disposition: Review alerts and exception reports across a wide range of typologies (spoofing, wash trades, marking the close, momentum ignition, layering, and more). You will look past the surface to determine the actual root cause: Was this a manipulative attempt, a structural artifact of DriveWealth’s fractional or B2B model, or noise?

• Reason about market context: Reconstruct what the market was doing around the flagged activity (NBBO, venues and sessions, price impact). Assess whether the conduct displaced the market or captured profit, while recognizing that a clear intent to manipulate is a violation even if the attempt fails due to market mechanics.

• Use AI to go faster and deeper: Leverage AI assistants to draft and refine SQL and Python analysis, summarize large datasets, and produce first-draft narratives. Critically validate every output against the underlying data before it becomes work product — this is a regulated environment and you are the final source of truth.

• Sharpen detection: Bring an analytical eye to scenario and threshold tuning. Identify noise, mis-set thresholds, and defensible parameter changes — and be prepared to justify them to regulators if asked.

• Support regulatory engagements: Contribute to responses to FINRA, SEC, and exchange inquiries, as well as wholesaler and market-maker RFIs.

• Navigate DriveWealth’s unique surveillance perimeter: Apply surveillance judgment across fractional share activity, options flow, and multi-partner order routing — understanding that the structural features of our platform (fractional fulfillment, B2B aggregation) require context-aware analysis, not just pattern-matching.

• Produce defensible work product: Write clear, evidence-cited disposition narratives and escalation memos. Know precisely when to escalate and build every finding to withstand regulatory scrutiny.

• Work in our data environment: Query and explore trade and order data using SQL in our Databricks environment. Conceptual data fluency is required; deep coding mastery is not — your AI fluency bridges the gap.

You Bring

• Real Surveillance Experience: Hands-on trade and market surveillance experience at a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, exchange, or SRO. You’ve investigated alerts and made dispositions you can defend. Be prepared to walk us through a case where you pushed past the obvious answer or questioned the alert logic.

• AI Fluency: You understand the fundamental difference between probabilistic AI models and deterministic systems. You leverage AI to draft, summarize, and iterate — while recognizing that its probabilistic nature means it can never serve as the final source of truth for evidence in a highly regulated industry.

• Conceptual Data Fluency: You don’t need deep coding skills, but you must understand the data — what tables represent, how records relate, and how a query should be conceptually structured. With that foundation and your AI fluency, the syntax takes care of itself.

• Market Curiosity (The Differentiator): At a minimum, a genuine interest in market structure and dynamics — venues, liquidity, order flow, price formation. We’ll invest in deepening this. We can’t install the curiosity.

• Nice to Have — Deeper Technical Skills: Stronger SQL or Python skills, cloud analytics experience (Databricks/Spark), or statistical analysis methods are welcome additions, not the gate.

• Nice to Have — Surveillance Platforms & Licensing: Hands-on time with platforms such as Nasdaq SMARTS, NICE Actimize, or Eventus. Prior exposure to regulatory inquiries, exams, or RFI responses. Series 7/24 or equivalent (sponsorship available).

New York, NY - Hybrid
Please note: this role is expected to come into our office on a cadence set by the Hiring Manager/Team.

Pay Range: $110,000 USD - $120,000 USD