Contract PolyPaths SME & L3 Support Lead

MUST be local to New York City, Hybrid Schedule

Risk IT | Fixed Income / Mortgage Products

We are seeking an experienced contractor to join Risk Technology as a PolyPaths subject matter expert and L3 support lead for our fixed income risk platform, with a focus on mortgage products. You will stabilize and support daily production risk runs, resolve complex incidents, and build out the data pipelines and automation around PolyPaths using SQL, Python, Databricks, and ETL tooling.

You should be able to contribute within the first few weeks with minimal onboarding.

Key Responsibilities

PolyPaths Expertise

Act as the go-to expert for PolyPaths configuration, scenario setup, batch processing, and integration with upstream and downstream systems.

Support analytics across mortgage products, including agency pass-throughs, CMOs, TBAs, non-agency RMBS, CMBS, and ABS (prepayment/default assumptions, OAS, duration, convexity, key rate sensitivities).

Perform release testing and regression validation for PolyPaths upgrades and model assumption changes.

Liaise with the vendor on defects, enhancements, and support cases.

L3 Production Support

Own L3 support for risk applications, including root-cause analysis, resolution of complex incidents, and permanent fixes.

Handle escalations from L1/L2 and protect SLAs for critical daily and intraday risk runs.

Lead problem management and post-incident reviews, and maintain runbooks and knowledge base articles.

Mentor L1/L2 analysts and participate in the on-call rotation.

Data Engineering & Automation

Write and optimize complex SQL for trade, position, market data, and risk result validation and reconciliation.

Develop and maintain ETL workflows using SSIS (or an equivalent ETL tool) to move and transform data between source systems, PolyPaths, and risk data stores.

Build and support Databricks pipelines and notebooks (PySpark/SQL) for risk data ingestion, transformation, and reporting.

Write Python for automation, data validation, reconciliation, monitoring, and tooling around PolyPaths batch runs.

Implement automated data quality checks and exception reporting.

Delivery & Knowledge Transfer

Work with Market Risk, Quant, Front Office, and Model Validation on requirements and analytics issues.

Support change management, UAT, and release planning.

Document systems, processes, and fixes to audit and control standards.

Hand over knowledge to permanent staff before the end of the engagement.

Required Skills & Experience

PolyPaths: 5+ years of hands-on experience (configuration, analytics, integration, or support).

Fixed income risk: Strong background with solid knowledge of mortgage products (agency MBS, CMOs, TBAs, prepayment modeling, OAS analytics).

Python (required): Production-quality scripting for automation, data processing, and validation.

ETL (required): SSIS or another enterprise ETL product (e.g., Informatica, Talend, Azure Data Factory, DataStage).

SQL: Advanced (complex queries, performance tuning, stored procedures).

Databricks: Practical experience (Spark, Delta Lake, notebooks, job orchestration).

L3 support: Proven experience providing or leading L3 support in financial services, with incident, problem, and change management (ITIL familiarity).

Market risk: Working knowledge of sensitivities, VaR, scenario/stress analysis, and P&L explain.

Soft skills: Strong troubleshooting, ability to work under pressure around daily risk deadlines, and clear communication with technical and business stakeholders.

Nice to Have

Experience with other analytics platforms (Bloomberg, Yield Book, Intex, Aladdin).

Workflow schedulers (Control-M, Airflow) and CI/CD tooling (Git, Azure DevOps, Jenkins).

Cloud experience (Azure, AWS, or GCP).

Exposure to FRTB, CCAR/DFAST, or similar regulatory frameworks.

Data lineage and governance experience.

Degree in Finance, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or similar. CFA or FRM is a plus