Business Intelligence Accountant

Simplex Trading is seeking a motivated, analytically-minded Business Intelligence Analyst / Accountant to join our Finance team in our Chicago, Illinois office. This is a full-time, in-office position for a candidate who sits at the intersection of finance and technology — someone equally comfortable querying a trading database as closing the books. You will own day-to-day accounting responsibilities while also serving as a key driver of process automation initiatives and data-driven financial analysis across the firm’s proprietary databases. The ideal candidate has a strong accounting or finance foundation, hands-on SQL proficiency, and a genuine enthusiasm for replacing manual workflows with scalable, technology-driven solutions.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

General Ledger & Month-End Close

• Execute monthly and quarterly close processes including journal entries, accounts payable, account reconciliations, accruals, and variance analysis; submit completed entries to the Senior Accountant for review and approval.
• Own the accounts payable process end-to-end, including invoice coding, payment processing, vendor reconciliation, and aging report.
• Maintain the general ledger and ensure accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of all financial data.
• Assist in preparing monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements in accordance with GAAP.

Regulatory Reporting & Compliance

• Maintain working knowledge of applicable SEC and FINRA financial responsibility rules.
• Support the annual audit process by preparing audit schedules and supporting documentation.

Financial Analysis & Database Reporting

• Write, optimize, and maintain SQL queries to extract, transform, and analyze financial data from the firm’s trading and operational databases.
• Build and maintain dashboards and recurring reports that provide P&L drivers, position exposures, fee structures, and other key performance indicators for senior leadership.
• Conduct ad-hoc deep-dive analyses on trading financial data.

Technology & Process Improvement

• Administer the firm's credit card spend and expense reimbursement program, including transaction coding and reconciliation.
• Identify and eliminate manual, repetitive finance workflows – including close processes, reconciliations and management reporting –  through scripting, macros, or low-code/no-code tools, in close collaboration with the Senior Accountant.
• Contributing  to evaluations of new accounting and finance technology, providing requirements, testing, and implementation support.
• Stay current on emerging tools and technologies relevant to finance automation (e.g., Python, Claude, dbt, Airflow, RPA platforms) and proactively propose improvements.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, or a related quantitative field.
• 3-5 years of experience in accounting, financial analysis, or a related finance role, ideally within a broker-dealer, proprietary trading firm, or regulated financial services environment.
• Willing to sit for FINRA licensing exams to ensure regulatory compliance with the scope of the role
• Hands-on proficiency with SQL; comfortable writing complex queries (joins, subqueries, window functions, CTEs) against large relational databases.
• Strong working knowledge of GAAP and financial reporting standards.
• Demonstrated experience identifying and implementing process automation or efficiency improvements in a finance context.

Preferred

• Experience with a data visualization or BI tool such as Power BI, Tableau, or Looker.
• Scripting experience in Python or VBA for finance automation use cases.
• Exposure to data engineering concepts (Extract, Transform, Load pipelines, data warehouses, dbt, or similar).
• Familiarity with options, derivatives, or equity securities accounting.
• Public accounting experience (Big 4 or regional firm) is a plus.