Vice President | Mutual Fund Operations

Job Description Summary

Hybrid Work Environment: This position follows our hybrid-friendly schedule, so you get the best of both worlds – flexibility and collaboration. In office days will be 3 per week in one of the following locations: St Petersburg, FL, Memphis, TN, or Southfield, MI.

Mutual Funds is seeking a seasoned Vice President of Operations to lead and oversee all aspects of Mutual Fund Operations, including Account Services, Reconciliations, Security Setup, and Trading.

This critical leadership role is ideal for a highly regarded financial services leader with a proven track record of driving operational excellence, leading large-scale teams, and delivering results in complex, highly regulated environments. As a key leader within the organization, this individual will be instrumental in driving performance, fostering collaboration, supporting succession planning initiatives, and positioning the department for long-term success.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the end-to-end mutual fund operations function, including governance of securities master and trading restrictions; trade execution and settlement; corporate actions and fund event processing (mergers, liquidations, MF to ETF conversions); share class conversions; networking functions; cash, share, and dividend reconciliation; direct fund account management; vendor oversight; fund relationship management; and leadership of the project/change portfolio.
• Product Setup & Platform Readiness: Partner with internal stakeholders on open end mutual fund platform.  Oversee onboarding of new mutual funds and share classes, ensuring accurate configuration of eligibility rules, minimums, fees/load structures, and trading restrictions across all systems and channels.  Manage fund reference data integrity and enforce prospectus and regulatory compliance through robust operational processes and platform controls. 
• Fund Relationship & Industry Advocacy: Serve as the executive liaison with fund families, transfer agents, vendors, and market utilities (NSCC/DTCC), ensuring operational readiness for new offerings, corporate actions, and regulatory changes. Advocate for the broker-dealer industry within the mutual fund ecosystem and through active participation in industry committees, influencing standards and regulatory developments to promote operational compatibility, efficiency, and client benefit.
• Provide executive oversight and strategic direction for the project and change portfolio, setting priorities, aligning initiatives with business objectives, and ensuring optimal resource allocation for timely, high-quality delivery that drives operational efficiency and scalability.

Other Responsibilities:

• Take overall responsibility for designing, developing, and delivering the organization's operational strategy and outcomes.

• Take overall responsibility for setting and approving area budgets that achieve organizational strategy.

• Manage and report on business performance; hold direct reports accountable for achievement of business plans, and take corrective action where necessary to ensure the achievement of business objectives, balancing the need to deliver short-term business objectives with the longer-term delivery of stakeholder value.

• Lead the development of annual and longer-term business plans for a significant function, ensuring alignment with strategy; quantify business outcomes, i.e., revenues or other key performance indicators (KPIs) and resource budgets (financial and headcount); and ensure integration of key activities or projects across the organization.

• Set and communicate the strategy, along with the broad actions needed to implement it, for achieving the organization's mission, vision, and values within a function; inspire a large or diverse workforce to commit to these tenets and do extraordinary things to achieve the organization's business goals.

• Identify and manage stakeholders up to and including top management level, finding out their needs, issues, and concerns and reacting to them by leading and coordinating the development of stakeholder engagement plans to support the communication of business information and decisions.

• Develop the strategy for a significant area of responsibility, such as a function, anticipating complex issues, challenges, and opportunities. Ensure the strategy is successfully implemented and meets medium-term business needs.

• Represent the organization or institution in a variety of industry, institutional, and/or professional forums, boards, and committees, in order to promote the company or institution brand or efforts. Represent the organization in external relations with investors, clients, industry, partners, the public, and others. Focus is on a specific area of the organization, such as a function or department. May involve preparation of presentations and materials for professional partnering meetings, seminars, and conferences.

• Identify the capabilities needed to meet the current and emerging business needs of a significant business area. Evaluate current capabilities, identify gaps, and prioritize development activities. Motivate others to develop their capabilities and fulfill their personal potential. Build capabilities elsewhere in the organization through mentoring and other informal methods.

• Define the detailed organization structure for a business area to align with corporate principles, define the relationship between elements of the organization, and define the responsibilities of senior managers, to enable the organization to achieve its business objectives.

• Participate in the development of corporate strategy, applying functional expertise to test the viability of the strategy and contributing creative ideas and insights to support the strategy formation process.

• Collaborates with private client group management to identify and implement solutions. 

• Monitors regulatory compliance with internal and external groups including auditors, FINRA, IRS, SEC and others. 

Knowledge Of:

• Company’s working structure, policies, mission, and strategies. 

• Project management methodology sufficient to act in a sponsorship role. 

• Principles of finance and securities industry operations. 

• Financial markets and products. 

• Performance management.

Skills:

• Act as the organizational authority on developing appropriate plans or performing necessary actions based on recommendations and requirements.

• Act as organizational authority on planning, organizing, prioritizing and overseeing activities to efficiently meet business objectives.

• Operates as a recognized expert to shift into and out of a mental mindsets associated with assessing the facts and circumstances of the current situation and/or environment and making the appropriate/innovative adjustments to thinking and work habits to thrive in any scenario. 

• Act as organizational authority on strategic planning.

• Act as the organizational authority on making sure the organization develops and maintains the culture, values and design it needs to reach its objectives while managing structural change.

• Act as the organizational authority on developing, monitoring, interpreting and understanding policies and procedures, while making sure they match organizational strategies and objectives.

• Act as organizational authority on developing and implementing policies.

• Act as the organizational authority on managing projects and/or programs within desired cost, time and quality parameters.

• Acts with expertise as the organization's authority on using clear and effective verbal communications skills to express ideas, request actions and formulate plans or policies.

• Acts as the organization's authority and established expert to develop solutions based on an understanding of the business environment and objectives.

• Acts as the organizational authority and established expert on costing, budgeting and finance tasks.

• Negotiates as the organizational authority and established expert to help the organization by obtaining consensus between two or more internal or external parties who may have different interests.

• Uses expertise to act as the organizational authority on reviewing and creating relevant, lucid and effective reports.

• Operates as a recognized expert to orient work in a workflow to plan, organize, and execute the steps it takes to achieve a goal to achieve higher efficiencies.

Licenses/Certifications:

• SIE required or ability to obtain within 120 days (as required by FINRA), provided that an exemption or grandfathering cannot be applied.

• Series 99 required, or ability to obtain within 120 days (as required by FINRA). Persons holding Series 6, 7, 17, 37 or 38 or those who hold principal-level registrations: Series 4, 9/10, 14, 16, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 51, and 53 would be qualified to register as an Operations Professional (Series 99) without passing the examination.

• Series 7 - Not required, but highly preferred.

Education

High School (HS) (Required)

Work Experience

General Experience - More than 15 years, Manager Experience - 10 to 15 years

Certifications

s7 - General Securities Representative Examination - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), s99 - Operations Professional Examination - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Securities Industry Essentials Exam (SIE) - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)

Travel

Less than 25%

Workstyle

Hybrid

The total compensation for this position includes base salary or wages, and may include components such as additional compensation (cash or equity), discretionary bonuses, or commissions. This position is eligible for a benefits package that may include medical, dental, and vision; life insurance; critical illness insurance and accident insurance; disability benefits; retirement savings; paid time off (including vacation, holidays, and sick leave); and parental leave.  Eligibility for benefits and specific offerings may vary based on position and employment status. To view more details of the benefits offered, visit Myrjbenefits.com.

At Raymond James our associates use five guiding behaviors (Develop, Collaborate, Decide, Deliver, Improve) to deliver on the firm's core values of client-first, integrity, independence and a conservative, long-term view. 

We expect our associates at all levels to:
•  Grow professionally and inspire others to do the same
•  Work with and through others to achieve desired outcomes
•  Make prompt, pragmatic choices and act with the client in mind
•  Take ownership and hold themselves and others accountable for delivering results that matter
•  Contribute to the continuous evolution of the firm

At Raymond James – as part of our people-first culture, we honor, value, and respect the uniqueness, experiences, and backgrounds of all of our Associates.  When associates bring their best authentic selves, our organization, clients, and communities thrive. The Company is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions on the basis of merit and business needs. 

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