Specialist - Investments

Company:

Description:

We are seeking a talented individual to join our Investments team, part of our people and investments business at Mercer. This role will be based in Pune. This is a hybrid role that has a requirement of working at least three days a week in the office.

We are seeking an experienced Market Data Analyst on a contingent basis to support Mercer's Reference Data team. This hands-on role will focus on reference data management, security/instrument setup and maintenance, and data quality assurance for public and private market instruments. The role reports to the Reference Data Lead and partners closely with Investment Operations, Data Engineering, Compliance, Risk, and external vendor teams to ensure accurate, timely, and well-governed reference data is available for downstream systems and users.

What will you focus on:

Security / instrument setup & maintenance

• Create, validate, and maintain comprehensive instrument records across asset classes (equities, fixed income, ETFs, mutual funds, derivatives, indices, private assets) in the firm's reference data systems and MDM tools.
• Assign and manage identifiers (ISIN, CUSIP, SEDOL, FIGI, LEI), symbology, exchange mappings, currency, and other instrument attributes.
• Configure instrument lifecycle states (active, inactive, matured, delisted) and maintain accurate corporate actions, corporate hierarchy, and security relationship linkages.
• Perform instrument onboarding for new issues, listings, and funds; coordinate with issuers, custodians, exchanges, and market data vendors to obtain validated metadata.
• Execute routine maintenance: corporate action updates, ticker mapping changes, corporate events, ticker splits, fund share class mapping, and instrument reclassifications.

Reference data management & master data processes

• Implement and follow master data management procedures and governance standards to ensure a single source of truth for reference data.
• Perform data modeling and attribute mapping for new instrument types and data domains; document metadata definitions and data lineage.
• Participate in change control, configuration management, and deployment processes for reference data systems.
• Manage permissions, entitlements, and data access configurations relevant to reference datasets in coordination with Compliance and IT/Security teams.

Data quality, validation & reconciliation

• Design and perform data validation, reconciliation, and exception handling processes between internal systems, market data vendors (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, FactSet), custodians, and third-party data sources.
• Develop and run automated and manual quality checks to detect anomalies, missing attributes, duplicates, stale records, and incorrect mappings; triage and remediate data issues.
• Maintain reconciliation logs, error dashboards, metrics, and SLA reporting for reference data quality and data delivery.
• Lead root-cause analysis for recurring data issues and design remediation plans to reduce reoccurrence.

Vendor coordination & contract/licensing awareness

• Support day-to-day vendor interactions for data delivery, content correction, and product enhancements.
• Validate vendor-supplied metadata and map vendor fields to internal attributes; coordinate fixes and escalations.
• Maintain an understanding of licensing and redistribution restrictions for market data products and flag compliance issues related to data usage or distribution.

Support to business users & project work

• Act as a primary point of contact for ad-hoc data requests, instrument lookups, and triage of incidents impacting reference data.
• Collaborate with Investment Operations, Portfolio Managers, Quant, Risk, and Data Engineering teams to translate business requirements into data models and delivery specifications.
• Contribute to projects such as platform migrations, MDM implementations, data migrations, and vendor integrations; support UAT, cutover activities, and post-live stabilization.
• Produce clear documentation, runbooks, and training materials for operational processes and onboarding.

Process improvement & automation

• Identify and implement opportunities for automation of data ingestion, validation, enrichment, and reconciliation using scripts, SQL, or workflow tools.
• Maintain and improve operational playbooks and SLAs; implement key performance indicators (KPIs) for data quality, completeness, and timeliness.

We will count on you to:

• Maintain high standards of accuracy and attention to detail in all data management activities
• Troubleshoot complex data issues and identify root causes under tight timelines
• Communicate clearly with business users and cross-functional teams
• Work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment
• Document processes, findings, and remediation plans clearly

What you need to have:

• 5+ years of professional experience in reference data management, market data operations, securities master data, or investment operations within financial services
• Strong working knowledge of market data providers and platforms such as Bloomberg, Refinitiv/Reuters, FactSet, and common vendor data models
• Hands-on experience with instrument setup and maintenance across multiple asset classes; familiarity with identifiers (ISIN, CUSIP, SEDOL, FIGI, LEI) and corporate action processing
• Practical experience with Master Data Management (MDM) systems and enterprise reference data stores
• Advanced Excel skills (including lookups, pivot tables, data cleaning) and proven experience with SQL for data extraction, reconciliation, and analysis
• Experience with scripting or automation tools (Python, VBA, or similar) and/or ETL tools for data processing
• Familiarity with data governance, metadata management, data lineage, and regulatory or licensing considerations for market data
• Strong analytical skills, attention to detail, and the ability to troubleshoot complex data issues under tight timelines
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to present findings and document processes clearly
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams

Desirable

• Experience with private markets / alternative assets reference data
• Familiarity with data visualization tools (Tableau, Power BI) to create dashboards and monitor KPIs
• Prior experience in MDM implementation projects, data migration, or reference data modernization efforts
• Knowledge of RDBMS (Oracle, SQL Server) and exposure to cloud data platforms (AWS, Azure) or data engineering practices

What makes you stand out?

• Data accuracy, Problem solving, Process improvement, Attention to detail, Cross-functional collaboration, Analytical thinking, Ownership and accountability