Practice Specialist, Commodity Trading
Job ID : 90581
The following information provides an overview of the skills, qualities, and qualifications needed for this role.
Specialists have a strong base of expertise in a function, industry or technical area. They are staffed on engagements (largely in full-time roles) and are expected to leverage expertise to solve some of the most pressing and complex issues at clients.
Who You'll Work With
You will be based in the Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Darien, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco or St.
Louis office as part of our Global Energy and Materials (GEM) Practice and will work with client service teams that serve commodity producers, processors, buyers, and traders across energy, nonferrous metals, and agriculture value chains.
The Commodity Trading Service Line at McKinsey supports clients in commodity trading growth strategy, operating model design, enterprise risk management, operations transformations, and analytics transformations.
Your impact within our firm
In this role you will deliver commodity trading content knowledge, working either directly with clients and client project teams.
You will be responsible for identifying issues, forming hypotheses, designing and conducting analysis, synthesizing conclusions into recommendations, and helping to implement change with our clients.
Throughout an engagement, you will be involved in discussions and presentations with senior client leadership.
You will maintain or develop a strong internal reputation and network with client teams and be "in the flow" of new external thinking, including maintaining or developing an external reputation.
You will help build the company's commodity trading capabilities. You will renew personal knowledge and expertise over time to remain at the leading edge of the field.
As a part of our commitment to apprenticeship and community, consistent and predictable in-person / in-office working time is essential to this role.
Your qualifications and skills
- Bachelor's degree with 4+ years' work experience at a physical commodity trader or graduate degree with 2+ years of work experience in physical commodity trading
- 2+ years of commodity markets experience developing trading or hedging strategies (especially physical / cash markets) or price-discovery analysis in oil & gas, power markets, agriculture, or nonferrous metals preferred
- Strong base of expertise in commodity trading and a strong trajectory of building on and expanding that base
- Understanding how price discovery occurs, price convergence of futures to physical, drivers of term structure (e.g., backwardation, contango), and typical physical contract terms for the commodities of your expertise
- Understanding of typical front, middle, and back-office processes at a physical commodity processor / trader and interfaces with corporate functions (e.
g., internal audit, accounting, treasury, FP&A) preferred
- Solid problem-solving skills, including the ability to disaggregate issues, develop hypotheses and actionable recommendations from data and analysis (focused on physical commodities)
- Ease in approaching issues from a top management view and discussing them in the overall context of a business
- Ability to absorb rapidly and grapple with a wide range of complex business issues (in area of expertise)
- Effective communicator and presenter, able to facilitate small meetings. Ability to explain nuances of commodity markets, price risk, and trading workflows (e.
g., risk implications of contracts with different incoterms) to people from other fields
Comfortable performing back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate and pressure-test common risk metrics (e.g., VaR, drawdown, volumetric positions) for common trading strategies preferred
Additional Information
Please review the additional requirements regarding essential job functions of McKinsey colleagues.
Equal Opportunity Employer
FOR U.S. APPLICANTS : McKinsey & Company is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
FOR NON-U.S. APPLICANTS : McKinsey & Company is an Equal Opportunity employer. For additional details regarding our global EEO policy and diversity initiatives, please visit our McKinsey Careers and Diversity & Inclusion sites.
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