Senior Brokerage Operations Associate (Canada)

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>Who We Are:</strong></p> <p><strong>Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure&nbsp;</strong>for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><strong>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.</strong><br><br><strong>Our Team Members:</strong></p> <p>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!<br><br>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.</p></div><h3><strong>Your Role:</strong></h3> <p>We're seeking a Senior Brokerage Operations Associate (Canada). An experienced individual contributor who has lived dealer, clearing, and custody reality and designs every process as if manual work is temporary.</p> <p>You turn CIRO-aligned operating requirements into scalable, automated, auditable workflows that Product and Engineering can build against. You partner closely with the ACCC President / UDP, Compliance, Product, Engineering, and global Ops. Someone who influences through expertise, crisp documentation, and decision logs, not through a team.</p> <p>Success is measured by launch readiness, STP and control quality, registered-account / tax operability, and systems others can run and not by headcount or heroic spreadsheet ops.</p> <h3><strong>What you'll walk into:</strong></h3> <p>You won't be starting from zero. You'll be owning live problems:</p> <ul> <li>Getting ready to open: figure out how we open and maintain accounts, process trades, and hold client cash and securities on day one. Build that for ACCC rather than copying a manual process from another firm.</li> <li>Working with partner brokers: define how a partner firm and ACCC split the work on accounts, trades, and holding client assets, so it still works as volume grows.</li> <li>After the trade: settlement in Canada (through CDS), trades that fail to settle, and corporate actions such as dividends and splits. Automate the routine cases and keep a clear list of exceptions, instead of running the book in spreadsheets.</li> <li>Registered accounts and tax: TFSA, RRSP, RESP, and similar accounts. Cover who can open them, contribution rules, what a security cost, tax withheld on dividends and other income, and the reports clients and partners need.</li> <li>The day after launch: written steps for daily work, checks that our records match the custodian and the market, contacts at vendors and custodians, and a plan if a system or vendor fails. Have these ready before real client volume shows up.</li> <li>Building Canada: clear handoffs between product, engineering, and operations teams.</li> </ul> <h3><strong>What you’ll own:</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Account lifecycle &amp; client/introducing-broker servicing (onboarding handoffs, KYC/AML ops interfaces, maintenance, transfers)</li> <li>Trade lifecycle (capture, affirmation, clearing, settlement, fails, breaks)</li> <li>Custody &amp; asset servicing (segregation, security movements, corporate actions, cash)</li> <li>Books &amp; records, reconciliations, exception management, and operational controls</li> <li>Registered accounts &amp; tax ops: TFSA, RRSP, RESP and related wrappers; tax lots / cost basis; withholding; local reporting partners need to stay compliant</li> <li>Day-2 production ops: runbooks, escalations, vendor/custody interfaces, BCP/DR operational playbooks</li> </ul> <h3><strong>How you’ll work:</strong></h3> <ul> <li><strong>Translate Canadian reality into runnable process</strong> — CIRO-aligned dealer/clearing/custody expectations, introducing–carrying dynamics, custody controls, and operational risk into SOPs, RACI, controls, and exception paths Product and Engineering can build against</li> <li><strong>Automation-first by default</strong> —<strong> </strong>redesign high-volume / high-risk / high-friction work for straight-through processing, rules, exception queues, and measurable SLAs, instead of spreadsheet heroics</li> <li><strong>AI-first operating lens</strong> — Prototype and productize AI-assisted ops (exception triage, recon investigation, SOP Q&amp;A, control-testing support, runbook copilots) with human oversight where risk or regulation requires it</li> <li><strong>Go-live and beyond</strong> — Readiness for ACCC launch and early production; continuous improvement after go-live</li> <li><strong>Raise the bar without managing a team</strong> — Coach partners through expertise, crisp documentation, and decision logs; leave systems others can run</li> </ul> <h3><strong>How we'll measure success:</strong><strong><br></strong></h3> <ul> <li>Launch readiness gates met with documented controls, SOPs, RACI, and runbooks Product / Eng / Ops can execute against</li> <li>STP, exception, and reconciliation aging targets defined and trending the right way post go-live</li> <li>Registered-account and tax workflows ready when partners launch, rather than added later</li> <li>Specs and decision logs that remove re-discovery for Product and Engineering</li> <li>Systems and playbooks others can run after you, so knowledge sticks in the org and not only in one person's head</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Who you are (Must-haves):</strong></h3> <ul> <li>10+ years deep, hands-on Canadian brokerage operations experience at a CIRO dealer, carrying broker, custodian, clearing firm, or brokerage ops function in Canada</li> <li>Fluent in the plumbing: clearing / settlement, custody, CDS / CDSX (or equivalent), fails, corp actions, tax, cash / securities ops, account servicing, introducing / carrying arrangements</li> <li>Demonstrated depth in at least two of: clearing / settlement; custody &amp; asset servicing; books &amp; records / reconciliations; registered accounts &amp; tax</li> <li>Regulatory-literate (CIRO / provincial securities / CSA context). You design operable controls, and you are not the UDP or compliance sign-off owner</li> <li>Builder: you've redesigned and shipped process + tooling changes that stuck, not only run BAU</li> <li>Practical with automation and AI (workflow automation, rules engines, RPA, or AI-assisted ops). You know where AI helps and where controls must stay deterministic</li> <li>Exceptional written communication: SOPs, RACI, decision logs, and requirements that cross-functional teams can ship against</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Who you might be (Nice-to-haves):</strong></h3> <ul> <li>Greenfield Canadian dealer / clearing / custody stand-up</li> <li>API-first or broker-as-a-service / correspondent platforms</li> <li>US and Canada dual-entity operations</li> <li>Deep CDS / CDSX or Canadian market-infrastructure experience</li> <li>Registered-account or Canadian tax-ops stand-up (TFSA, RRSP, RESP, tax lots, withholding, reporting)</li> <li>AI-native ops workflow: recurring use of tools like Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, or custom agents for SOP drafting, exception synthesis, and prototyping</li> </ul><div class="content-conclusion"><h3><strong>How We Take Care of You:</strong></h3> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Competitive Salary &amp; Stock Options</span></li> <li style="text-align: justify;">Health Benefits</li> <li style="font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card</span></li> </ul> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.<br></span></em></p> <p><span style="font-size: 8pt;"><a href="https://files.alpaca.markets/disclosures/AlpacaRecruitmentPrivacyPolicy.pdf"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Recruitment Privacy Policy</span></em></a></span></p></div>