Corporate Strategic Planning, Associate

Role Description

The Associate, Strategic Development is a generalist execution role supporting enterprise-level strategic development work, including strategic transactions and special situations that shape the firm’s structure, footprint, and long-term positioning. The Associate partners day-to-day with a Vice President, Strategic Development and supports end-to-end execution by producing analyses, coordinating diligence and cross-functional inputs, and preparing governance-ready materials to enable timely decisions and efficient execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Support evaluation and execution of strategic transactions and non-standard initiatives, including selective acquisitions/divestitures, partnerships, minority investments, carve-outs, internal restructurings, and other special situations.
• Build structured analyses that clarify options, trade-offs, risks, and decision points for leadership.
• Develop and maintain market, peer, and competitive context relevant to active initiatives and strategic alternatives.
• Own defined transaction and initiative workstreams end-to-end, including analysis, coordination, drafting, and follow-through.
• Build and review financial models and supporting analyses, including valuation, sensitivities, scenario comparisons, and impact assessments.
• Support diligence execution for assigned workstreams by coordinating requests, organizing inputs, synthesizing findings, and surfacing key risks, gaps, and trade-offs for VP review.
• Maintain a clear path for assigned workstreams (key deliverables, dependencies, approvals, and timing), escalating issues early with recommended paths forward.
• Support close readiness and, where applicable, post-close or end-state implementation by tracking dependencies and ensuring follow-through across team.
• Coordinate inputs across Treasury, Legal, Risk, Tax, Operations, Technology, and business stakeholders to meet deadlines and maintain alignment.
• Support assessment of capital, funding, balance sheet, and structural implications where relevant.
• Run working sessions for assigned workstreams as needed: set up the discussion, align stakeholders on the question to be answered, capture decisions and next steps, and drive follow-through.
• Draft and coordinate materials for internal management and governance forums, ensuring clarity on:
• What decision is needed and by when,
• Options and trade-offs,
• Key risks and mitigants, and
• Required approvals and dependencies.
• Ensure materials are accurate, internally consistent, and decision-ready; incorporate stakeholder input cleanly and maintain controlled distribution for sensitive content.
• Support day-to-day coordination with external advisors (investment banks, legal counsel, consultants), including organizing diligence streams, consolidating questions, tracking deliverables, and preparing internal readouts.
• Quality-control advisor outputs for consistency and completeness; highlight gaps and decision points to the VP.
• Handle sensitive and confidential information with strong judgment and discretion, following internal information handling protocols and appropriate distribution practices.

Qualifications and Skills

• 3 to 6 years of relevant experience in investment banking, corporate development, private equity, strategy, or strategic finance, with exposure to transactions and/or complex cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong financial analysis and modeling skills (valuation, sensitivities, scenario analysis) and high attention to detail.
• Strong writing and synthesis skills; ability to translate complexity into clear, structured materials for decision-making.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple stakeholders and deliver high-quality work under tight timelines.
• High integrity and discretion in handling confidential matters.

Core Competencies/ What Success Looks Like

• Generalist execution: moves seamlessly between analysis, coordination, drafting, and follow-through.
• High capacity and work ethic: reliable responsiveness and stamina during execution peaks without quality slippage.
• Ownership and closure: takes accountability for deliverables, drives items to completion, and reduces rework through clean, accurate outputs.
• Decision-useful outputs: produces concise, well-structured materials that clarify trade-offs and enable timely decisions.
• Judgment on escalation: identifies when to push forward independently vs. when to escalate to the VP with a recommended path.

Pay

The anticipated salary range for this role is between $95,000.00 and $140,000.00. The specific salary offered to an applicant will be based on their individual qualifications, experiences, and an analysis of the current compensation paid in their geography and the market for similar roles at the time of hire. The role may also be eligible for an annual discretionary incentive award.

Benefits

SMBC offers a competitive portfolio of benefits to its employees, including:

• Hybrid workforce model that provides employees with an opportunity to work from home, as well as, from an SMBC office.
• Reasonable accommodations during candidacy for applicants with disabilities consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law.