Director, Corporate Actions

Your Role:

The Director of Global Corporate Actions will own the function end-to-end across U.S. and international markets. This leader will be accountable for daily production, supervisory controls, team performance, incident management, and the systems and operating model required to scale Corporate Actions globally.

• Lead Alpaca’s Corporate Actions organization across mandatory and voluntary events, including dividends, splits, mergers, exchanges, tenders, rights, redemptions, spin-offs, elections, and security lifecycle changes.
• Establish and own the supervisory framework governing Corporate Actions, including clear maker-checker standards, control gates, reconciliations, exception management, escalation thresholds, and evidence of review.
• Hold the team accountable for accurate, timely processing and ensure no material event progresses without required supervisory and system checks.
• Own material Corporate Actions incidents from containment through root cause analysis, remediation, and permanent control or system improvement.
• Partner with Security Master, Trading, Ledger, Product, Engineering, and Operations leadership to eliminate recurring failure modes and strengthen front-to-back controls.
• Drive automation, observability, reconciliation, and exception tooling to reduce manual processing and improve scalability.
• Build a common global operating model across markets, custodians, depositories, currencies, tax regimes, deadlines, and local market conventions.
• Develop the Corporate Actions team, strengthen subject-matter depth and succession coverage, and reduce reliance on tribal knowledge.

Supervisory Controls & Systems Oversight

The Director will own the end-to-end Corporate Actions control framework, ensuring events are accurately validated, reconciled, processed, synchronized across systems, and formally closed.

Responsibilities include:

• Establishing controls over event terms, Security Master data, eligible positions, expected entitlements, elections, withholding, cash, stock, fractions, and exceptions.
• Ensuring customer-impacting events are appropriately pre-processed and reconciled before market or payment deadlines where settlement timing creates risk.
• Overseeing accurate, controlled booking of entitlements, including retries, reversals, manual adjustments, and exception handling.
• Ensuring Corporate Actions bookings propagate correctly across Back Office, Front Office, Security Master, Ledger, Trading, margin, buying power, and customer positions.
• Designing controls to prevent customers from trading against incorrect post-event positions, symbols, or quantities when processing or system synchronization is incomplete.
• Requiring post-processing reconciliation to internal books and records, custodians, depositories, paying agents, and other authoritative sources.
• Defining approval thresholds, tolerances, escalation standards, supervisory evidence, event closure requirements, and management reporting.

The Director must understand how Corporate Actions failures can create broader trading, margin, settlement, and financial exposure—not simply operational breaks—and build controls accordingly.

Qualifications (Must-Haves)

• 8+ years of Corporate Actions experience within a broker-dealer, clearing firm, custodian, bank, or comparable financial institution.
• Prior leadership experience managing a Corporate Actions or securities operations function.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of mandatory and voluntary Corporate Actions, including dividends, reorganizations, splits, mergers, tenders, rights, redemptions, elections, entitlements, and security lifecycle events.
• Strong knowledge of U.S. market infrastructure, including DTCC/DTC Corporate Actions processes.
• Meaningful international Corporate Actions experience across multiple markets, custodians, currencies, withholding regimes, and local market conventions.
• Deep understanding of how Corporate Actions bookings flow through broker-dealer books and records, position systems, front-office trading systems, margin, and customer-facing balances.
• Demonstrated understanding of the risks created when Security Master, back-office positions, and front-office tradability are not synchronized around an effective-date event.
• Experience operating in a retail brokerage or clearing environment where Corporate Actions must often be pre-processed with strong pre-reconciliation controls before final depository confirmation.
• Proven experience designing and supervising maker-checker controls, reconciliations, exception-management processes, and operational risk frameworks.
• Demonstrated ownership of high-risk production functions where errors can create direct financial, customer, trading, settlement, margin, or regulatory exposure.
• Strong incident-management discipline with a track record of driving permanent process and technology remediation.
• Ability to challenge control design, identify structural weaknesses, and hold teams accountable for remediation.
• Strong ability to partner with Product and Engineering and translate operational risk into scalable system requirements.
• Clear, concise communicator able to work with senior leadership, partners, auditors, regulators, custodians, and technical teams.
• Comfortable operating independently in a fast-paced, technology-driven, high-growth environment.
• Alignment with Alpaca’s company tenets:
• Stay Curious
• Have Empathy
• Be Accountable