Clearing Operations Associate - Reconciliations and Generalist

Summary

Join Alpaca's Clearing Operations team as a Reconciliations Specialist and lead the end-to-end reconciliation process for back-office accounts, including suspense, wash, bank, custodian, and proprietary accounts. You will prepare, review, and resolve reconciliation exceptions, ensuring timely follow-up across all activities. This role requires extensive use of Excel or Google Sheets to verify the accuracy and completeness of the firm's books and records. You will collaborate with internal and external partners to investigate and resolve discrepancies. You will also partner with engineering and product teams to improve reconciliation tools and workflows. Finally, you will maintain and enhance reconciliation policies and procedures as the business scales.

Requirements

• 2–5 years of experience in financial operations, preferably in a broker-dealer, clearing firm, or fintech environment
• Deep understanding of reconciliation processes, with hands-on experience in bank, custodian, suspense, and internal accounts
• Expert-level Excel or Google Sheets skills, including pivots, lookups, and complex formulas
• Strong SQL background with ability to inner/left/right join tables to build SQL based reconciliations with unique tables
• Strong attention to detail and a relentless focus on getting to zero breaks
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and solving problems proactively
• Clear communicator with the ability to summarize findings for technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Able to prioritize and own multiple deliverables in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
• Possess a FINRA SIE or within first 180 days of employment
• Must be able to follow company tenets of:Stay CuriousHave EmpathyBe Accountable

Responsibilities

• Own daily, weekly, and monthly reconciliations across suspense, wash, bank, and proprietary accounts
• Investigate and resolve breaks with urgency and accuracy, collaborating across internal teams and external partners
• Reconcile firm books and records against clearing systems, custodian records, bank feeds, and external files to ensure zero-dollar variances
• Drive the cleanup and aging analysis of historical reconciliation items, ensuring root-cause resolution and documentation
• Partner with engineering and product teams to improve reconciliation tools, reporting, and workflow automation
• Maintain and enhance reconciliation policies, procedures, and controls as the business scales
• Support audit, regulatory, and operational due diligence requests related to firm balances and reconciliation controls

Preferred Qualifications

• FINRA Series 7
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Finance, Data Analytics, or a related field
• Experience writing and optimizing SQL queries to support reconciliation and exception reporting
• Expert with data visualization tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or Looker for tracking and presenting reconciliation metrics
• Prior exposure to reconciliation or exception management tools (e.g., SmartStream TLM, Duco, FIS IntelliMatch)
• Knowledge of broker-dealer operations, clearing, or custody workflows
• Experience working with APIs or flat-file data sources to automate reconciliation tasks
• Comfort working in a startup or fast-paced fintech environment where priorities shift quickly

Benefits

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card