Settlements Associate

About this role

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer and brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Our recent Series D funding round brought our total investment to over $320 million, fueling our ambitious vision.

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 9 million brokerage accounts.

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.

Alpaca is proudly backed by top-tier global investors, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 380+ 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!

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.

Your Role:

Global Equity Settlement

• Own the end-to-end global equity settlement process, partnering with our custodian, counterparties, and internal stakeholders to ensure timely and accurate settlement across multiple international markets.

• Ensure transactions are accurately recorded across internal and external systems to facilitate successful settlement.

• Monitor daily settlement activity and proactively identify transactions at risk of failing.

• Investigate and resolve settlement exceptions, trade discrepancies, and failing transactions.

• Review buy-ins, settlement penalties, and aged fails while coordinating remediation efforts with counterparties and our custodian.

• Monitor trade matching through SWIFT and settlement platforms, ensuring counterparties affirm and match trades within required market deadlines.

Trade Exception Management

• Investigate and resolve trade mismatches, including:

• Settlement instruction discrepancies

• Quantity and price differences

• Allocation issues

• Counterparty booking errors

• FX and market-specific settlement exceptions

• Partner closely with trading, finance, compliance, counterparties, and custodians to drive timely resolution of settlement issues.

• Escalate complex settlement discrepancies and operational risks to the Director of Brokerage Operations when appropriate.

Cash & Position Reconciliations

• Perform daily reconciliations of securities positions and cash balances across multiple global markets and currencies.

• Investigate and resolve cash and stock reconciliation breaks between internal ledgers and external custodians.

• Produce reconciliation reports identifying money differences, position discrepancies, and operational exceptions.

• Ensure all reconciliation breaks are researched, documented, and resolved within established service levels.

Operational Risk & Regulatory Controls

• Ensure operational processes comply with applicable SEC, FINRA, and global market regulations.

• Support compliance with SEC Rule 15c3-3 by helping maintain proper possession and control of customer securities.

• Identify operational risks and escalate issues that may impact clients, settlement, or regulatory obligations.

• Maintain complete and organized operational records supporting audits, examinations, and regulatory reviews.

• Assist the Director of Brokerage Operations with Internal Audit requests, regulatory examinations, and remediation efforts.

Reporting & Process Improvement

• Produce timely, accurate, and meaningful operational reporting on settlement activity, aged fails, reconciliation breaks, and operational metrics.

• Prepare work papers, operational summaries, root cause analyses, and management reporting.

• Identify recurring operational issues through trend analysis and recommend improvements that reduce risk and increase efficiency.

• Update operational procedures, controls, and documentation as business processes evolve.

• Support the implementation of policy frameworks while serving as a resource for operational policy questions.

Automation & Strategic Initiatives

• Partner with Engineering and Product teams to automate manual operational workflows and improve settlement processes.

• Leverage SQL, Metabase, AI tools (such as Cursor and ChatGPT), and reporting platforms to enhance operational efficiency and analytics.

• Participate in cross-functional projects supporting new products, international market expansion, and operational scalability.

• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives that enhance the client experience while reducing operational risk.

Collaboration

• Work cross-functionally with Brokerage Operations, Trading, Finance, Compliance, Engineering, and Customer Operations to ensure seamless post-trade processing.

• Foster an environment of teamwork, accountability, and continuous learning.

• Support department initiatives and perform additional responsibilities as business needs evolve.

Who You Are (Must-Haves)

• 3+ years of experience supporting brokerage operations with a focus on global equity settlements.

• Strong understanding of securities settlement lifecycles within a broker-dealer or carrying firm.

• Experience working with third-party clearing firms and global custodians.

• Knowledge of U.S. b

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