Director, Custodian Operations and Strategy

Career Overview

Kestra Financial is a wealth management platform focused on supporting independent financial professionals, including traditional and hybrid RIAs. The role involves overseeing the strategy, administration, and delivery of integrated multi-custodian account and investment data through the Kestra echo system.

What You’ll Do

• Cross-functional Leadership: Central leader and subject matter expert for all custodian interfaces and integrations across the organization.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with Kestra business leaders and key teams to deeply understand their requirements, translate them into actionable roadmap priorities, and deliver practical, high-impact solutions.
• Develop and continuously refine a comprehensive strategy to maximize the value of custodian data across all business lines.
• Leverage in-depth knowledge of custodian data sources, formats, and capabilities to identify and validate business problems and opportunities.
• Propose and prioritize practical, value-driven solutions that deliver measurable improvements in efficiency, client outcomes, advisor productivity, and revenue generation.
• Provide day-to-day operational oversight of custodian feed file deliveries, monitoring for delays, errors, and performance issues, while driving timely remediation.
• Design, implement, and govern a centralized administrative framework for enabling, transmitting, and offboarding custodian data to internal and external downstream consumers across all business lines.
• Enhance third-party vendor review and audit processes to ensure secure, compliant, and efficient consumption of custodian data.
• Partner closely with compliance and risk management functions to fully understand and incorporate their data requirements, ensuring the use of consistent, authoritative sources of custodian data.
• Facilitate alignment, remove barriers, and drive effective execution across teams.
• Maintain expert knowledge of wealth technology vendors and platforms serving wealth management firms, with a focus on their data requirements and integration needs.
• Proactively facilitate the provision of high-quality custodian data support to enable seamless integrations and maximize platform value.

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business, or Software Engineering.
• 2+ years experience in technical product management in an Agile environment.
• 5+ years of experience in wealth management, investment operations, or trading.
• Deep understanding of RIA/wealth advisory operations, portfolio management, performance reporting, fee billing, compliance (e.g., ADV, SEC/FINRA), tax-aware strategies (versus purchase), and client/advisor workflows in multi-custodial environments.
• Proven hands-on knowledge of custodian data feeds (Transaction, Position, Label, Security, Price, and Open/Closed Lot), APIs, file formats (e.g., CSV, PDF parsing), aggregation platforms, data normalization/reconciliation, MDM/medallion architectures, and integration challenges across custodians.
• Strong experience in agile product management, roadmap prioritization, stakeholder management, user story writing, A/B testing, and driving adoption/revenue outcomes.
• Ability to balance business value with technical feasibility.
• Familiarity with modern tech stacks (e.g., cloud platforms, SQL/Databricks, APIs, Python for data workflows).

Qualifications

• Series 7, 63, 65, or 66 optional.
• Internal Application Policy: Internal applicants must be in good standing and have a minimum of 1 year of service with Kestra. Internal applicants must also have a minimum of 1 year service in current role unless approved by EVP.

Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits with a large employer (over 1600 employees nationwide)
• 401(k), health insurance, and a competitive benefits package
• Tuition reimbursement for qualified expenses

Kestra Values

• Serve
• Make it Happen
• One team