Strategic Partnerships Lead - Custody

Chris Baily; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

InvestCloud’s Altic network is seeking a senior partnerships leader to build and own the custodian side of the Altic network. You will lead with PMN leadership and Legal to secure named custodian partners, shaping the network’s scale and ensuring governance is maintained across commercial terms.

This role sits at the core of expanding private markets infrastructure within wealth platforms, offering ownership over high-impact relationships and a path to extend into other network participant types

Qualifications

• 7–10 years in commercial partnerships or business development within financial services.
• Proven track record sourcing, negotiating and closing commercial agreements with large financial institutions.
• Direct experience with US custodians, broker-dealers or bank custody operations.
• Experience running long, multi-stakeholder enterprise cycles to signature.
• Experience structuring pricing and negotiating contracts with Legal.

Responsibilities

• Map US custodian landscape and define named account list with PMN leadership and Product.
• Own end-to-end commercial conversations with prospective custodian partners including pricing and service commitments.
• Run contract negotiations with Legal through to signature and secure internal sponsorship.
• Maintain custodian relationships across full lifecycle including renewals and escalations.
• Oversee handoff from signed agreements into Product and Engineering for integration.

Skills

Commercial partnerships

Business development

Strategic relationship management

US custodians

Contract negotiations

Pricing structuring

AI-native tooling

Tools

AI-native tooling

Job description

Altic is InvestCloud's rules-based digital execution network for private markets. It connects asset managers and general partners on one side with wealth managers and their platforms on the other, and coordinates the service providers between them against a single shared operating standard. Altic exists because wealth management is entering a structural transition in which private markets are increasingly expected to function inside managed and discretionary portfolio environments. However, existing private markets infrastructure was largely designed for: Institutional workflows Low transaction volumes High-touch operations Document-centric processing Managed-account environments introduce fundamentally different requirements: Higher operational scale Increased lifecycle activity Smaller ticket sizes Model-driven portfolio construction Significantly greater workflow coordination demands Public markets solved this decades ago through shared infrastructure and common standards. Private markets have not, and that is now the binding constraint on how far they can scale inside wealth portfolios. APL provides the managed account operating foundation. PM+ enables private investments to be managed alongside public assets. Altic provides the network and lifecycle coordination layer that makes private markets operations work at managed-account scale. A network is only as good as who is on it. Altic works because the firms that actually process private markets activity - custodians, transfer agents, fund administrators and the wider service ecosystem - are commercially signed up to it and operating to its standard. Building that participant base determines how quickly Altic scales. InvestCloud is seeking a senior partnerships leader to build and own the custodian side of the Altic network. Custodians are among the most consequential participants: they hold the assets, they sit in the path of every advisor allocation, and their operating standards determine what a wealth manager can realistically offer. The US custodian market is concentrated. A small number of counterparties matter enormously, cycles are long, and decisions are made across custody operations, alternative investments, risk, legal and platform teams simultaneously. Success depends on depth - building genuine sponsorship inside a defined set of named accounts and navigating each institution through to a signed agreement.

This is not a traditional business development role. It is a founding commercial position, working directly with PMN leadership, Legal and Product, responsible for building the custodian base the Altic network depends on to scale.

Why This Role Is Different

Altic is a fully funded, capitalized operating business inside InvestCloud, whose clients represent more than 40 percent of the $132 trillion of assets under management globally. The platform is built. What determines how fast it scales now is which firms are commercially signed up to it.

This role offers:

• Ownership of an entire side of a network, not a territory or a quota
• Commercial authority: you structure the deal, you run the negotiation, you sign the partner
• A named seat with the custodians that matter, at a point where the operating standard for private markets in wealth is still being set
• A small, AI-native team that automates its own work after asking anyone else to
• The remit to extend into other network participant types as the network grows
• You won't be handed a partner list and a target. You'll decide which custodians matter, and go and get them.

Key Responsibilities

Account Planning & Market Coverage

• Map the US custodian landscape and define the named account list PMN leadership and Product plan against
• Build and maintain account plans for each priority custodian, mapping stakeholders across custody operations, alternative investments, risk, legal and platform teams
• Use AI-native tooling to keep account intelligence, stakeholder mapping and diligence continuous rather than periodic
• Keep PMN leadership able to forecast the network build accurately, with an honest read on where each account genuinely sits

Commercial Structuring & Negotiation

• Own commercial conversations end to end with prospective custodian partners, including pricing, deal structure and service commitments
• Build internal sponsorship inside each custodian and convert multi-stakeholder review into a signed agreement
• Run contract negotiations directly, working alongside Legal through to signature
• Balance Altic's network economics against custodian-specific requirements, holding the network standard where bespoke requests would fragment it and escalating the genuine exceptions rather than absorbing them

Relationship Ownership

• Act as the named relationship owner for custodian partners across the full lifecycle, from first contact through renewal
• Run the ongoing relationship cadence covering operational performance, escalations and commercial renewalsRepresent custodian requirements into Altic's roadmap early enough to shape it, rather than surfacing them during integration

Cross-Functional Delivery

• Manage the handoff from signed agreement into Product and Engineering integration scoping
• Remain engaged through integration so custodians have a single, consistent point of contact
• Escalate partner-side risks and blockers to the appropriate internal owner after they become delivery issues

Basic Qualifications

• 7–10 years in commercial partnerships, business development or strategic relationship management within financial services
• Demonstrated experience sourcing, negotiating and closing commercial agreements with large financial-services counterparties
• Direct working experience with US custodians, broker-dealers or bank custody operations
• Experience running long, multi-stakeholder enterprise cycles inside large financial institutions through to signature
• Experience structuring pricing and running contract negotiations directly, working alongside Legal

Preferred Qualifications

• Existing relationships within US custodian platforms
• Working knowledge of alternative investment operations at a custodian, including safekeeping, settlement and asset servicing for registered semi-liquid structures
• Experience owning commercial and operational relationships with financial-services firms over multiple years rather than single transactions
• Actively uses AI and modern research tooling in commercial work - this is how PMN operates day to day
• Experience in a network, platform or infrastructure business where commercial terms must be standardized across many counterparties
• Experience as an early or founding commercial hire

About InvestCloud

InvestCloud, a global leader in wealth technology, aspires to enable a smarter financial future. Driving the digital transformation of the wealth management industry, the company serves a broad array of clients globally, including Wealth and Asset Managers, Wirehouses, Banks, RIAs, and Insurers. In terms of scale, the company’s clients represent more than 40 percent of the $132 trillion of total assets globally. As a leader in delivering personalization and scale across advisory programs, including unified managed accounts (UMA) and separately managed accounts (SMA), the company is committed to the success of its clients. By equipping and enabling advisors and their clients with co