Functional Consultant

About the role

A leading UAE bank is undertaking a major transformation programme to fully automate its regulatory reporting landscape. We are looking for an experienced functional consultant to play a pivotal role in this initiative — translating regulatory requirements into bank-specific business logic, driving functional design, and ensuring a smooth transition from legacy/manual reporting to a modern, audit-ready automated solution.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys sitting at the intersection of finance, operations, and technology, and who has a track record of leading regulatory reporting automation programmes end-to-end.

What you'll do

• Act as the functional bridge between regulatory finance, regulatory operations, and IT delivery squads.
• Document detailed business interpretations and data transformation logic for all in-scope regulatory reports.
• Drive functional solutioning workshops and finalise functional specifications with technology partners.
• Conduct impact assessments comparing automated outputs against current submissions; categorise variances as automation gains, legacy errors, data gaps, or functional defects.
• Lead and obtain sign-off on user acceptance testing (UAT), including parallel-run validation against legacy reports.
• Define tolerance thresholds and adjustment/override processes within the automated workflow.
• Perform root cause analysis on functional defects across source data, mapping logic, and code.
• Author the operational runbook for Reg Ops — covering triggers, exception handling, reconciliations, and override protocols.
• Support operationalisation, training, and the transition of Reg Ops from manual preparation to a "review and oversight" model.

Requirements

Experience

• 8–10 years as a functional consultant in banking, across regulatory reporting, ALM/FTP, or other finance and risk domains.
• 5–6 years specifically in regulatory reporting automation, including hands-on experience as a functional lead on at least one such programme.
• Proven delivery of regulatory reporting automation for CBUAE (preferred) or other major jurisdictions (e.g. KSA, Egypt, India, Singapore).

Subject matter expertise

• Strong working knowledge of CBUAE SupTech and BRF regulatory guidelines and explanatory notes (or equivalent depth in another major regulator, with willingness to ramp up on CBUAE quickly).
• Solid understanding of banking products and the functional data landscape across core banking systems.
• Working knowledge of finance general ledger structures, chart of accounts, and financial reporting concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to lead requirements and functional design workshops and document detailed business logic.
• Experience designing cross-report validation rules and testing intra- and inter-form consistency.

Technical

• SQL proficiency for independent functional data validation (strongly preferred).
• Familiarity with one or more regulatory reporting platforms (e.g. Wolters Kluwer OneSumX, Adenza/AxiomSL, Moody's, Oracle OFSAA) is a plus.

Education

Bachelor's degree required; MBA in finance preferred.

Behavioural

• Self-starter with strong ownership and delivery focus.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication across business and technology audiences.
• Strong problem-solving mindset and the ability to lead through ambiguity.
• Collaborative team player with leadership presence in cross-functional settings.

Benefits

• High-visibility role on a flagship transformation programme at a leading UAE bank.
• Direct exposure to senior finance and technology leadership.
• Opportunity to shape the regulatory reporting target operating model end-to-end.
• Competitive package commensurate with experience.