Director, Futures

Summary

Join Wealthsimple's leadership team and contribute to the development of a best-in-class futures trading experience. Partner with cross-functional teams as a futures subject-matter expert, defining operational requirements, financial needs, and risk management strategies. Define operational requirements across the futures lifecycle, including systems, processes, controls, and reporting. Develop and manage relationships with key partners and vendors. Advise Operations leaders on safe and effective operationalization of daily execution. Build an incident management playbook and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Co-author client communications and educational materials. Develop and maintain an educational environment for team advancement. This role requires deep futures operational expertise, strong problem-solving skills, and excellent collaboration abilities.

Requirements

• Experience in the offering of trading futures in a CIRO operating environment
• Experience in working with an engineering/development team, in automating processes and operations and setting direction on how futures will be operationalized
• Experience in the day to day operations and clearing futures
• Futures operational expertise is a requirement, with a deep understanding of how futures work, the system requirements behind them and regulatory requirements
• A strong problem solver with extraordinary judgment and ability to navigate through uncertainty; there is rarely a playbook to follow
• Collaboration - excellent interpersonal skills and willingness to work in collaboration with various team members
• Efficiency - ability to produce significant output with minimum wasted effort; ability to move fast
• Focuses on the most important things - knows where to go deep, and where to go fast, to make the biggest impact
• Proactive and assertive - acts without being told what to do. Brings new ideas to Wealthsimple
• Communication - Speaks plainly and truthfully. Communicates complex ideas in a simple and easy-to-understand way
• Data and analytics - strong analytical and problem-solving skills with superior attention to detail
• Organization and planning - Plans, organizes, schedules and budgets in a productive manner, with a rigorous focus on prioritization
• Honesty and integrity - doesn't cut corners. Does what is right, not what is politically expedient

Responsibilities

• Partner with teams across the business as a futures subject-matter-expert and thought partner to help define and scope our futures features/product offering, operationalize daily processes and manage financial, regulatory and reputational risk
• Define operational requirements (systems, process, controls, tooling, reports/monitoring, 3rd party solutions, etc) across the full futures lifecycle to deliver our product roadmap
• Define financial/collateral requirements needed to support various futures features and ways to improve collateral/capital efficiency
• Execute key initiatives, in close partnership with Capital Markets and Trading, Product, Engineering, Data Science, Compliance and Risk
• Develop and manage relationships with key partners and vendors (e.g., data vendors, custodians, exchanges, clearing houses)
• Advise Operations leaders on how to safely and effectively operationalize daily execution across the full futures lifecycle; e.g., confirmations, settlement, exercise, assignment, expiry and reconciliations; conduct thorough testing prior to launch and new feature rollouts
• Define and operationalize daily risk management activities (e.g., monitoring client accounts, concentration, etc)
• Define operational risk controls to keep our clients’ assets safe, manage risk to Wealthsimple, and meet strategic and regulatory standards
• Build an incident management playbook for identification, assessment, quantification, reporting, communication, mitigation and monitoring; lead incident resolution and remediation quickly and effectively when they occur
• Support the publishing, review and continuous improvement of our policies and procedures in collaboration with Risk and Compliance
• Co-author and review futures-related client communications and educational materials; contribute to the education of our clients to enable them to make responsible investment decisions
• Ensure compliance with all CIRO, FINTRAC and other regulatory requirements; support/advise on our regulatory strategy
• Develop and maintain an educational environment where the knowledge and performance of our team is continually advancing

Preferred Qualifications

Strategic and growth-minded; a thought leader who is excited to build something new

Benefits

• Competitive salary with top-tier health benefits and life insurance
• Retirement savings matching plan using Wealthsimple for Business
• 20 vacation days per year and unlimited sick and mental health days
• Up to $1,500 per year towards wellness and professional development budgets respectively
• 90 days away program: Employees can work internationally in eligible countries for up to 90 days per calendar year
• A wide variety of peer and company-led Employee Resource Groups (ie. Rainbow, Women of Wealthsimple, Black @ WS)
• Company-wide wellness days off scheduled throughout the year