Corporate Operations Lead

Alpaca

New York (NY)

On-site

USD 150,000 - 190,000

Full time

34 hours ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & stock options

Health benefits

Home-office stipend

Brex card monthly stipend

Job summary

Alpaca is seeking a builder‑operator to own high‑impact operating constraints across HR, Finance, Engineering capacity, and more. You’ll diagnose root causes, design scalable solutions, and drive adoption until measurable outcomes change the business.

This role demands end‑to‑end ownership, not coordination, and a relentless focus on durable impact as the company grows. You will partner with senior leaders, surface capacity needs, and create leverage through automation, process redesign, or

Qualifications

Builder-operator with end-to-end ownership and a track record delivering high-stakes programs.
Systems thinker able to map workflows and diagnose root causes across unfamiliar domains.
Influence without formal authority to mobilize cross-functional teams and drive adoption.

Responsibilities

Own prioritized constraints end-to-end and drive measurable outcomes.
Parachute into unfamiliar domains (HR, Finance, Eng capacity) to diagnose bottlenecks and design solutions.
Partner with senior leaders to surface capacity needs and mobilize resources for adoption.

Skills

Builder-operator

Systems thinker

Influence without authority

Prioritization

Analytical rigor

Ownership

7+ years experience

Tools

AI automation

Job description

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent‑first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional‑grade APIs. This includes broker‑dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts. Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We’re deeply committed to open‑source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award‑winning, developer‑friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top‑tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We’re a dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond! We’re searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca’s rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Your Role

Make Alpaca scale by owning and resolving the operating constraints Corporate Operations prioritizes. Your mission is to take high‑impact operating constraints from discovery through measurable outcome: drive them to resolution, establish durable ownership with the right long‑term owner, then move to the next priority. You parachute into unfamiliar domains (HR, Finance, Engineering capacity, regional operating models, broker dealer bottlenecks, and more), diagnose what’s actually limiting scale, create the solution, and stay accountable until the outcome actually changes. You are a builder‑operator, not a coordinator. You work on the problems Corporate Operations has prioritized as highest‑value for the company right now.

Things You Get To Do:

Own prioritized constraints end‑to‑end. Take cross‑functional operating problems from zero context through measurable outcome. When the constraint is removed and the fix persists, you move on. You do not hold permanent territory in any function.
Work in any domain, including BD ops when it’s the bottleneck. This month that might be HR automation or Finance close; next quarter decision delegation or Engineering throughput; later a broker dealer constraint (AML scale, reconciliations, operational readiness) if that’s where Alpaca is stuck. Domain expertise is not the job. Systems thinking across unfamiliar domains is.
Sense → Design → Build → Drive. Measure what’s happening, redesign what’s broken, create the processes/automation/governance/infrastructure needed (or mobilize Engineering, Product, ORE, or functional teams when that’s the right answer), and drive adoption until the outcome changes.
Partner across the company. Work directly with functional leaders and their teams to mobilize resources and drive adoption. You influence priorities and surface capacity needs; you do not absorb the function or run their day‑to‑day execution.
Create non‑linear leverage. Ask whether workflow redesign, automation, org design, better decisions, vendor changes, or hiring is the right lever, and use whichever applies. Success means creating leverage so Alpaca needs fewer incremental people to support the same growth in the areas you touch.
Contribute to company deep‑dives. Help establish baselines for velocity, capacity, and friction in the areas you work in.
Communicate capacity honestly. Be explicit about trade‑offs and escalate when scope or priority needs Director or VP input, including when work should be deferred.

Who You Are (Must‑Haves):

Builder‑operator with end‑to‑end ownership. Proven track record taking ambiguous, high‑stakes problems from zero context to measurable outcome. You don’t hand off recommendations and walk away.
Systems thinker who learns fast. Able to parachute into unfamiliar domains, map workflows/capacity/decision systems, diagnose root cause, and become effective without deep prior subject‑matter expertise.
Influence without authority. Proven ability to mobilize cross‑functional teams, partner with senior stakeholders, and drive adoption among people who don’t report to you.
Prioritization and judgment. Able to distinguish root cause from symptoms, focus on what matters, and push back with evidence when scope drifts.
Analytical rigor. Comfortable establishing metrics, measuring before/after, and using data, not anecdotes, to diagnose problems and prove impact.
High ownership through implementation. You finish what you start. Adoption and lasting change matter as much as the design.
7+ years of relevant professional experience, including demonstrated ownership of complex, cross-functional operating initiatives from diagnosis through implementation and measurable outcome.

Who You Might Be (Nice‑to‑Haves):

Experience in internal product, strategy/ops, business operations, or operational transformation with strong builder instincts.
Strong fluency in AI and automation as tools for creating operating leverage.
FinTech or brokerage exposure is helpful in BD ops contexts. The job is operating pattern recognition, not securities expertise.
Capability spikes in systems/product build, executive orchestration, or quantitative capacity analysis.

What This Role Is Not:

A PMO project manager, business analyst who hands off recommendations, permanently embedded functional ops leader, process documentation role, product manager owning a product roadmap, or coordinator who stops at diagnoses and handoff. Functional leaders retain their teams and recurring execution; you own the constraint until it is resolved and durable ownership is established.

How We Take Care of You: