Investment Operations Team Lead

At Nucleus, we aim to be the UK’s best‑loved retirement wealth platform. Delivering exceptional customer outcomes is central to everything we do, and our Investment Operations function plays a crucial role in ensuring client investments are serviced accurately, efficiently and with care across their full lifecycle.

We are looking for an experienced people manager to lead and develop an operational team in the department, with main responsibilities in the Confirmations and Settlements processes, although part of the wider department responsible for asset servicing activities, including asset onboarding and maintenance, trading, corporate actions and dividends, in addition to Confirmations and Settlements, you will support your peers and line manager across the function.

The Role

As an Investment Operations Team Leader, you will lead the SME’s and be accountable for the processes and controls aligned to confirmations and settlements for Nucleus wrap. You will use insight, data and strong leadership to ensure processes operate efficiently, risks are proactively managed, and customers receive consistently excellent outcomes. You’ll need to understand the consequences of all actions and manage these in line with our risk framework.

Key Responsibilities

• Subject matter expert for end-to-end processes within Confirmations and Settlements and understanding of wider asset lifecycle processes
• Lead the day-to-day operational delivery of the Confirmations & Settlements process and controls, ensuring trades are confirmed and settled accurately, on time and in line with deadlines.
• Provide direct people leadership, including coaching, guidance, performance feedback and support to build capability, confidence and accountability within the team.
• Ensure strong control of operational risk, proactively identifying settlement risks, breaks or exceptions and taking appropriate action to resolve or escalate issues.
• Act as a subject matter point of contact for confirmations and settlements queries, supporting issue resolution and knowledge sharing.
• Monitor workloads and prioritisation, managing daily cut‑offs, volumes and exceptions to ensure consistent service delivery.
• Maintain high service standards for customers and advisers, understanding what good service looks like and reinforcing this through team behaviours and outcomes.
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders (asset onboarding, trading team, outsourced providers) to support smooth trade settlement and issue resolution.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives, contributing to root cause analysis, process enhancements and efficiency improvements.
• Support the delivery of change, helping embed new processes, systems or regulatory requirements while managing team understanding and expectations.
• Ensure procedures and controls are followed, promoting adherence to operating models, governance, and regulatory requirements.
• Act as a role model for Nucleus Smart, Heart and Courage values, demonstrating ownership, professionalism and positive leadership behaviours.
• Ensures compliance with our Code of Conduct at all times

About You We have always placed more importance on cultural contribution above technical ability, but we would really like you to have/be: 

• Understanding and experience in Financial Services administration, ideally working with a wrap platform in an investment operations capacity and experience in team management within this type of environment
• Experience leading a team and coaching others
• Subject matter expert experience of servicing multiple asset types (Funds, Equities, Bonds, cash products) and the full asset lifecycle
• Clear and effective communicator, able to engage with internal and external stakeholders using strong active listening, questioning and written skills
• Ownership driven and well organised, managing own workload effectively while taking responsibility for team outputs and deadlines.
• Analytical and risk aware, able to identify issues, escalate appropriately, support root cause analysis and highlight risks to customer or adviser outcomes.
• Knows what excellent service looks like to drive positive outcomes for our customers
• Takes ownership for personal development
• Positively demonstrate the Nucleus Smart, Heart and Courage values and behaviours

A little about us   We’re the Nucleus Financial Platforms group and we help make retirement more rewarding.   People come first - whether it’s our colleagues, or the advisers and customers we support, we know that working in partnership and collaboration leads to the best outcomes. Together, we’ve shaped the platform to how it is today. We work hard, and we celebrate hard too.  

Our ambition is to create a platform with a difference, putting the customer centre stage meant tearing up the rule book and starting from scratch. We’ve come a long way since then, but our mission remains just as focused. That’s why our culture, values, and social responsibility are things we keep at the top of our agenda – because we know they matter and have a big impact.  

Our culture is one of the many things that sets us apart from the pack. We want to have an environment where our people feel that they can make a real difference, know they’ll be rewarded for their efforts and more importantly, enjoy themselves at work.   Are we a perfect match? Check out this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Ys7TTG1I8] and find out!  

Inclusion and diversity at Nucleus   As with most things in life, who cares, wins. We really care about inclusion.   For us it’s not a tick box exercise; inclusion and diversity are embedded in our culture and everything we do. It’s a commercial imperative. It isn’t about being PC. It’s about being future-relevant and durable. We owe it to ourselves and the industry to ensure we are playing our part in creating a fair, balanced and transparent financial services sector.  

More diversity means broader experience, a wider set of perspectives and a better collective ability to problem-solve. And it means being more representative of customer groups, which supports areas such as product development.  

At Nucleus, we offer a generous blend of benefits for the things that really matter to our people, including a non-contributory pension, bonus, enhanced parental leave, paid time off for emergencies, health and wellbeing initiatives and flexible working options.