Location: London
Contract Role
Overview
A rapidly growing energy trading and market-making firm is seeking an experienced Regulatory Licensing & Authorisation Specialist to support a number of strategic regulatory initiatives across the UK and UAE. This is a high-impact contract role focused on securing new regulatory permissions, managing licence variations, and supporting the firm's continued expansion into new products, jurisdictions, and regulated activities.
The successful candidate will work closely with senior leadership, legal, compliance, risk, and external regulators, taking ownership of the end-to-end licensing process and ensuring applications are delivered to the highest regulatory standards.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the preparation, management, and submission of FCA and DFSA licence applications, including new authorisations, licence variations, and regulatory approvals.
- Develop and coordinate all supporting application documentation, including business plans, compliance frameworks, policies and procedures, governance structures, organisational charts, and fit & proper assessments.
- Act as the primary point of contact throughout the application process, managing interactions with regulators and responding to information requests and regulatory queries.
- Advise senior stakeholders on regulatory strategy relating to new business lines, legal entities, jurisdictions, and controlled functions.
- Conduct gap analyses against relevant FCA and DFSA regulatory requirements and recommend remediation plans where required.
- Coordinate cross-functional workstreams involving Compliance, Risk, Legal, Finance, Operations, and Senior Management.
- Support ongoing regulatory relationship management and licence maintenance activities following approval.
- Ensure all submissions are accurate, complete, and aligned with regulatory expectations and industry best practice.
Requirements
- 6+ years of direct experience delivering regulatory licensing, authorisation, or regulatory change projects.
- Proven experience securing FCA permissions and/or DFSA licences for investment firms, brokerages, trading firms, market makers, or other regulated financial institutions.
- Strong understanding of the FCA Handbook, particularly SYSC, SUP, and PERG, together with relevant DFSA regulations and rulebooks.
- Demonstrated experience managing complex regulatory projects involving multiple stakeholders and tight timelines.
- Background within financial services, ideally including derivatives, commodities, capital markets, brokerage, electronic trading, or market-making environments.
- Excellent drafting, documentation, and regulatory communication skills.
- Strong stakeholder management and project coordination capabilities.
Preferred Background
- Previous experience within a Big Four advisory practice, specialist regulatory consultancy, legal advisory firm, or in-house regulatory licensing function.
- Experience supporting regulatory applications for trading, brokerage, market-making, or investment management businesses.
- Former regulator or regulatory consultant with recent hands-on experience managing successful FCA and/or DFSA authorisation processes.