Associate Director | Front Office Trade Desk Applications

Raymond James Financial, Inc.; Saint Petersburg (FL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Raymond James Financial, Inc. seeks an Associate Director of Trading Technology to lead trader-facing platforms and drive strategic modernization across the order lifecycle.

You will partner with traders, operations, architecture, and product teams to shape roadmaps, deliver scalable solutions, and ensure reliability and regulatory alignment. The role emphasizes hands‑on leadership, mentorship, and the ability to translate complex trading needs into robust technology outcomes while maintaining

Qualifications

• 10+ years leading software engineering and technology teams for mission‑critical trading platforms.
• Deep knowledge of wealth management trading operations and front‑office systems.
• Experience with order lifecycle management, compliance controls, and risk management.
• Proven ability translating trading workflows into scalable technology solutions.
• Strong architecture, microservices, APIs, and event‑driven design experience.
• Experience modernizing legacy front‑office apps with minimal business disruption.

Responsibilities

• Own and lead the TDOE platform's strategic direction and operational delivery.
• Partner with traders, product, ops, architecture, engineering, QA, SRE and compliance.
• Drive the roadmap to improve trader workflows and automate manual processes.
• Lead business analysis, requirements discovery, and solution design.
• Ensure reliability, performance, observability, and security of trading platforms.
• Build and mentor high‑performing teams and foster accountability and ownership.
• Communicate platform strategy and risks to executives and stakeholders.

Skills

Trading platforms leadership

Team leadership

Software engineering leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Architecture & APIs

Regulatory compliance awareness

Mentoring

Strategic roadmapping

Cross-functional collaboration

Event-driven architecture

Tools

OMS

APIs

Job description

Serving as a hands‑on technology leader for Raymond James’ trading platforms, the Associate Director of Trading Technology will help shape, deliver, and continuously evolve mission‑critical trader‑facing systems that sit at the center of the firm’s order entry and trading workflows. This role combines passion for the markets, strong engineering judgment, and disciplined execution leadership to build scalable, resilient, intuitive, and high‑performance technology used by traders and financial professionals every day.

The Associate Director will operate at both strategic and hands‑on levels—partnering closely with Trading, Product, Operations, Architecture, Engineering, QA, SRE, and Compliance teams to understand real trading workflows, define practical technology roadmaps, and deliver improvements across the full order lifecycle. This leader will play a key role in modernizing legacy capabilities into a more service‑based, API‑enabled, event‑driven ecosystem while protecting the stability, performance, and regulatory integrity of production trading platforms.

The ideal candidate is a technically curious, passionate, and accountable leader who enjoys getting close to business, engaging deeply with engineers and architects, and helping teams turn complex trading needs into reliable technology outcomes. They will mentor and develop high‑performing teams, foster a culture of ownership, craftsmanship, collaboration, and continuous improvement, and bring the energy to build great platforms—not just manage them.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the Raymond James Trade Desk Order Entry (TDOE) platform, providing strategic and operational leadership for the trader‑facing application supporting equity and options trading across the enterprise.

• Accountable for the delivery, enhancement, stability, and long‑term evolution of TDOE, ensuring alignment with business objectives, trader productivity, regulatory requirements, and operational excellence.

• Partner closely with Trade Desk leadership, traders, operations, compliance, product management, and technology teams to understand business needs, gather requirements, and deliver solutions that improve trading efficiency and client service.

• Lead business analysis, requirements discovery, and solution design activities for trading workflows, ensuring business requirements are translated into scalable and maintainable technology solutions.

• Drive the strategic roadmap for TDOE, identifying opportunities to improve trader workflows, automate manual processes, reduce operational risk, and enhance integration with adjacent trading platforms.

• Provide technology leadership across order lifecycle management, including order capture, validation, routing, execution, allocations, exception management, and post‑trade processing.

• Partner with OMS, COE, Rebalancing, Operations, and Architecture teams to ensure seamless end‑to‑end trading workflow integration across the trading ecosystem.

• Lead modernization efforts for TDOE, including UI modernization, API enablement, workflow automation, service‑based architecture adoption, and platform simplification initiatives.

• Ensure platform reliability, resiliency, scalability, performance, observability, and security while maintaining support for critical trading operations.

• Oversee delivery across software engineering, business analysis, quality assurance, production support, SRE, and vendor teams to ensure predictable execution and operational stability.

• Build and lead high‑performing teams, including Engineering Managers, Software Engineers, Business Analysts, Architects, and QA professionals

• Establish and reinforce a culture of accountability, ownership, customer focus, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.

• Communicate platform strategy, delivery status, risks, and investment priorities to executive leadership and business stakeholders.

Technical Skills/Experience:

• 10+ years of progressive experience leading software engineering and technology teams responsible for mission‑critical trading and wealth management platforms is preferred.

• Deep knowledge of Wealth Management trading operations, including advisor‑directed trading, portfolio trading, rebalancing workflows, block trading, trade desk workflows, and order management processes.

• Extensive experience supporting trader‑facing applications and front‑office trading systems used by equity and options traders.

• Strong understanding of order lifecycle management, including order entry, pre‑trade validation, compliance controls, routing, execution management, allocations, exception processing, and post‑trade workflows.

• Proven experience with Order Management Systems (OMS), trade execution platforms, market connectivity, execution venues, and downstream settlement processes.

• Demonstrated expertise gathering business requirements and translating complex trading workflows into technology solutions that improve trader productivity and operational efficiency.

• Strong business analysis capabilities, including stakeholder engagement, process mapping, workflow optimization, requirements management, use case development, and solution design.

• Experience partnering directly with traders, trade desk managers, operations teams, and business stakeholders to design and deliver workflow enhancements.

• Strong architecture and application delivery experience across distributed systems, microservices, APIs, integration platforms, messaging technologies, and event‑driven architectures.

• Experience modernizing legacy front‑office applications while maintaining platform stability and minimizing business disruption.

• Deep understanding of system performance, resiliency, scalability, observability, and operational support requirements for highly available trading platforms.

• Experience operating within regulated financial services environments with knowledge of audit, compliance, risk management, supervisory controls, and regulatory obligations.

• Proven track record leading cross‑functional teams consisting of engineering, business analysis, QA, SRE, operations, vendors, and business stakeholders.

• Strong people leadership experience, including hiring, coaching, performance management, succession planning, organizational development, and leadership mentoring.

• Ability to communicate effectively with both executive leadership and technical teams while balancing strategic objectives with day‑to‑day delivery responsibilities.

• Demonstrated success defining platform strategy and technology roadmaps while maintaining accountability for execution, operational stability, and business outcomes.

Licenses/Certifications:

• None required.