Head of Operations

Mission Staffing
New York, NY

Key Responsibilities:

  • Lead, coach, and develop a team of operations staff across transaction processing, client servicing, and back-office functions.
  • Actively monitor workflows, step in to resolve escalations, help with day to day trade processing as needed and maintain a clear understanding of team capacity.
  • Own end-to-end process management: document, review, and continuously improve operational procedures to reduce error rates, processing times, and manual effort.
  • Partner with Compliance, Risk and Accounting teams to ensure all operational activities meet company and regulatory requirements (e.g., DDQ, AML, KYC, SEC/FINRA/FCA/NFA where applicable).
  • Oversee vendor and counterparty relationships relevant to operations, including administrators, brokers, custodians, and technology providers.
  • Lead incident response for operational failures or breaks — coordinate resolution, conduct root cause analysis, and implement corrective actions.
  • Drive automation and technology initiatives in partnership with IT and the business to reduce operational risk and improve scalability.
  • Maintain company’s Marine Cargo insurance policy, monitoring premium usage allocations and policy renewals.


Required Qualifications

  • 10+ years of progressive operations experience within financial services (asset management, banking, brokerage, insurance, or fintech).
  • Proven track record of hands-on management — this is not a strategy-only role; direct involvement in daily operations is expected.
  • Strong working knowledge of physical commodities products (metals preferred i.e. Futures, Options, Swaps, Forwards, Warrants, Physical Metal Offtakes and Streams), transaction lifecycles, and back-office processes.
  • Demonstrated ability to manage and motivate the team, including performance management and professional development.
  • Experience working within a regulated environment with direct exposure to compliance and risk frameworks.
  • Proficient in operational reporting, data analysis, and using metrics to drive decisions.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to present clearly to senior stakeholders.
  • Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business, Economics, or a related field; MBA or equivalent is a plus.
  • Experience with process improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, or similar).
  • Experience managing cross-functional projects or system implementations.

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