Corporate Operations Lead

Social Leverage

Northern (KY)

Hybrid

USD 120,000 - 190,000

Full time

10 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Salary & Stock Options

One-time USD 500 home-office setup

Monthly USD 150 stipend

Job summary

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure, seeking an experienced operations leader to own and resolve high-impact constraints that limit scale. You will diagnose bottlenecks, design scalable solutions, and drive durable outcomes across multiple domains, acting as a builder-operator rather than a coordinator.

In this on-site role, you will collaborate with senior leaders to mobilize resources, create non-linear leverage through automation and governance,

Qualifications

7+ years of relevant professional experience in operations or program management.
Proven track record leading cross-functional, high-impact initiatives.
Ability to diagnose root causes and drive durable outcomes.
Strong analytical and quantitative mindset.
Excellent stakeholder management and communication.

Responsibilities

Own prioritized constraints end-to-end.
Work in any domain, cross-functional impact across HR, Finance, Engineering capacity, and broker-dealer bottlenecks.
Sense → Design → Build → Drive.
Partner across the company to mobilize resources and drive adoption.
Create non-linear leverage through workflow redesign, automation, or org design.
Contribute to company deep-dives by establishing baselines for velocity, capacity, and friction.
Communicate capacity honestly and elevate when trade-offs require input.

Skills

Builder-operator

Systems thinker

Influence without authority

Prioritization

Analytical rigor

Ownership

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem solving

Tools

AI tools

Automation tooling

Job description

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.

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 elevate 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: