Middle Office – Direct Lending Loan Operations Vice President
JPMorgan Chase · New York, United States · 4d ago
The Fixed Income Middle Office sits at the intersection of Portfolio Management, Trading, Operations, Technology, Risk, and Controls. It provides critical trade lifecycle support, data integrity, process oversight, and operational excellence to safeguard portfolio accuracy and enable the front office to focus on investment decisions.
As a Vice President on the Fixed Income Middle Office team, you will support our Private Credit / Direct Lending platform. This role is a Middle Office SME and operational point of contact for Direct Lending, providing end-to-end oversight of the trade/lifecycle process, reconciliations, issue escalation, and governance of the servicing model to ensure timely execution and strong controls as the platform scales. The Direct Lending platform is entering a ramp period with increasing deployment and borrower count, driving non-linear increases in BAU lifecycle events, reconciliations, and exception management needs. This role adds experienced coverage to preserve service levels and strengthen controls as BAU lifecycle volume, reconciliations, and exception management scales.
Job Responsibilities:
- Own and oversee lifecycle event processing and throughput during periods of high concurrency, including payments, notices, rate resets, amendments, consents, drawdowns, repayments, covenant package coordination, and delayed settlements.
- Provide settlement support for funding, paydowns, and fees, partnering with internal and external stakeholders to resolve breaks and exceptions.
- Lead cash, position, and accrual reconciliation oversight, including break investigation, escalation, closure discipline, and governance cadence.
- Drive exception management and escalation ownership, coordinating across Middle Office partners and stakeholders to ensure timely resolution and adherence to controls.
- Deliver operational inputs for reporting and client servicing, recognizing the impact of multiple vehicles on reporting variants, cutoffs, and formats.
- Support onboarding for new SMA, Fund-of-One accounts, new fund launches, and new product builds, including account setup, connectivity, standing instructions, reconciliation model, reporting specifications, procedures, approvals, target operating model, lifecycle playbook, controls, exception taxonomy, UAT/testing, governance signoffs, and training.
- Partner on material operating model changes, focusing on requirements, design, testing, runbooks, cutover, and monitoring to reduce operational risk during scale.
- Act as a subject matter expert for training and knowledge transfer as staffing scales, helping institutionalize best practices and consistent oversight.
- Execute daily oversight activities, including pipeline review, monitoring notices and inbox, lifecycle event preparation, pre- and post-cutoff reconciliation, and documentation and escalation of unresolved issues. Lead or participate in weekly oversight with the servicing provider to review pipeline, cash breaks, lifecycle events, and unresolved issues, ensuring actions are owned and followed through.
- Drive monthly oversight, reporting, and meeting cadence, including review of portfolio and cash accounts, document management, reconciliation outcomes, unresolved breaks, and process improvement items.
- Own and execute governance and controls deliverables, such as KRIs, procedures, and audit readiness, continuously enhancing procedures to support scale.
Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills:
- Middle Office / loan operations experience supporting private credit and/or direct lending lifecycle processing (funding, paydowns, interest/payment support, rate resets, notices, amendments/consents).
- Strong reconciliation and break management expertise (cash/position/accrual), including root-cause analysis, escalation, and closure governance.
- Proven ability to run BAU while simultaneously executing onboarding/build work in deadline-driven ramp periods.
- Strong controls mindset (procedures, KRIs, audit readiness) and comfort operating in a high-accountability environment.
- Stakeholder management skills across operations, front office/business, and external parties (agents/custodians/vendors as applicable).
Preferred qualifications, capabilities, and skills:
- Direct experience onboarding new operating perimeters (new clients/vehicles/products) and building scalable playbooks, controls, and exception taxonomies is strongly preferred.
- Experience overseeing a third-party servicing model and operating across multiple platforms during integration/transition periods is preferred.