Position Summary
The Head of Trade Operations is responsible for leading and overseeing end-to-end trade execution, operational integrity, and cross-functional coordination across regions. This role ensures accurate contract execution, shipment monitoring, financial alignment, and risk control while protecting trade margins and optimizing working capital. The position plays a critical leadership role in driving operational excellence within a fast-moving commodity trading environment.
Key Responsibilities
1. Operations Leadership & Team Management
- Lead the overall coordination and implementation of daily operations and discipline within the Operations team.
- Build, lead, and develop multi-country operations teams and team leaders.
- Define performance standards, KPIs, and training frameworks for the Operations team.
- Drive a culture of ownership, accuracy, accountability, and continuous improvement.
2. Trade Execution & Contract Management
- Monitor contracts and agreements related to cargo, chartering, storage, shipping, and other trade-related matters.
- Ensure operational integrity of the trade book by accurately capturing physical trades, shipment milestones, costs, and status updates in the CTRM/SAP system.
- Reconcile Trading vs Operations vs Finance records to ensure alignment between contract terms, physical execution, invoicing, and P&L recognition.
- Validate position status and delivery performance against trading commitments and customer contracts; proactively flag discrepancies or over-/under-delivery risks.
3. Forecasting & Capacity Planning
- Lead long-term forecasting aligned with the Trading team.
- Manage short- and mid-term shipment forecasting aligned with trading positions, customer delivery schedules, and origin readiness.
- Coordinate with Supply Chain and Logistics teams on vessel, container, and warehouse capacity planning to prevent congestion, stock-outs, or excess inventory.
- Monitor inventory-in-transit and port stocks, providing early warning signals to Trading and Supply Chain teams.
4. Financial Control & Margin Protection
- Maintain cost accrual visibility, including freight and handling charges.
- Support Finance with accurate month-end closing and margin analysis.
- Monitor working capital exposure tied to inventory, in-transit cargo, and payment cycles.
- Protect and enhance trade margins and cash flow by minimizing financial costs, demurrage, detention, operational penalties, and service fees.
5. Governance, Compliance & Risk Management
- Establish and enforce SOPs and internal controls covering documentation, inspections, LC compliance (if applicable), and regulatory requirements.
- Partner with Legal, Finance, and Risk functions to ensure alignment with trade finance, regulatory, and compliance frameworks.
- Produce and review daily, weekly, and monthly operations reports covering shipment status, inventory-in-transit, demurrage exposure, payment status, claims, and execution risks for senior management and trading desks.
Key Qualifications
Experience
- Minimum 5+ years of experience in commodity trade operations, logistics, or physical trading support in an equivalent leadership position.
- Proven leadership experience managing regional or multi-country operations teams.
Technical Knowledge
- Deep knowledge of Incoterms, commodity contracts, and international payment terms.
- Strong understanding of trade finance, shipment documentation, and physical execution processes.
- Experience with CTRM/SAP systems; CRM system experience is a plus.
- Intermediate to Advanced proficiency in MS Office.
Skills & Competencies
- High resilience and strong decision-making ability in fast-moving, high-risk trading environments.
- Strong numeracy skills with high accuracy and attention to detail.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong analytical capability with the ability to deliver reports that inform strategic decisions.
- Ability to effectively engage with teams, customers, management, and sales stakeholders.
- Good command of English; Chinese proficiency is preferred.
