Trade Officer

Job ID: 43853

Location: Johannesburg, ZA

Area of interest: Operations

Job type: Regular Employee

Work style: Office Working

Opening date: 10 Nov 2025

Job Summary

Join us as a Trade Officer at Standard Chartered, where you will play a critical role in facilitating international trade by managing documentation and orchestrating operational duties that ensure efficient and compliant trade workflows. You will be an essential member of our Trade Documentary team dedicated to supporting the seamless execution of trade finance transactions on a global scale, helping to mitigate risk and enhance operational accuracy.

This position sits within our dynamic Transformation, Technology & Operations (T&O) team — the backbone of our bank's innovation and operational excellence. Within T&O, we champion agility, foster continuous learning, and bring collective talent together to evolve banking solutions that empower communities worldwide. This role offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to high-impact projects, collaborate globally, and sharpen your expertise while supporting the bank's strategic objectives and legacy.

By joining us, you become part of a 170-year-old institution committed to progress, innovation, and readiness for tomorrow's challenges today. We value initiative, collaboration, and dedication, ensuring your contributions shape the future of trade finance within an inclusive and supportive environment.

Key Responsibilities

As a Trade Officer, your key responsibilities will include:

• Delivering consistent, top-tier service by processing trade transactions accurately and efficiently, adhering to established business processes and operational guidelines.
• Releasing trade deals and managing documentation according to customer instructions and departmental standards, ensuring all transactions meet timeliness and accuracy expectations.
• Monitoring and ensuring all trade transactions remain within allocated approved limits continuously, thereby safeguarding risk exposure and compliance.
• Interpreting and navigating trade workflows and departmental procedures effectively, prioritizing tasks in alignment with business needs and client urgency.
• Identifying opportunities for process improvement and contributing to operational best practices to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams such as compliance, risk, and client relationship managers to facilitate a seamless trade finance experience.
• Maintaining up-to-date knowledge of regulatory requirements including anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance, ensuring all trade activities operate within legal frameworks.

Skills and Experience

• Prior experience in trade finance operations within a banking or financial institution.
• Experience document checking under letter of credit.
• Strong understanding of Trade Finance products, including export negotiations, guarantees and documentary collections.
• Relevant trade certification such as a Certificate for Documentary Credit Specialists. (CDCS), Certificate for Specialists in Demand Guarantees (CSDG), or Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF).
• Knowledge of anti-money laundering (AML) & sanctions.
• Familiarity with Trade Finance systems and technologies.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.