Senior Business Architect

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more.Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts.Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.Our Team Members:
We're a dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond!We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.
Your Role:We're seeking a Senior Business Architect (Canada) for ACCC: someone who can go deep on brokerage operations across accounts, trading, clearing, settlement, custody, and asset servicing, and can turn that operating knowledge into clear requirements and turn that into clear requirements Product and Engineering can build.
You are the bridge between how the Canadian brokerage actually works and the product roadmap. You lead structured discovery with counterparts and work out how partner firms, account opening, clearing, custody, and day-to-day operations fit together, then write that down as epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, edge cases, and open decisions.
Success is measured by: requirements and designs teams can build without guessing;
a clear split between what the system does and what people still do at launch;
solution options that Product and Engineering can sequence;
and a backlog tied to ACCC milestones and capabilities.
What You'll Walk IntoYou won't be starting from zero. You'll be owning live problems:
Operations scope:
defining what ACCC must support across accounts, trading, clearing, settlement, custody, books and records, and asset servicing.
Partner firm handoffs:
what partners send us, what we send back, and who does what across accounts, trades, cash, and securities.
Account and trade lifecycle:
account opening, settlement in Canada through CDS, failed trades, transfers, and corporate actions such as dividends and splits.
Platform gap analysis:
comparing today's Alpaca platform with Canadian brokerage operations requirements to decide what we reuse, change, or build.
Launch scope:
separating what must work on day one from what follows, including registered accounts (TFSA, RRSP, RESP), more products, and more partner services.
Open decisions:
logging each one with an owner so it gets closed or consciously deferred.
What you’ll ownRequirements across ACCC’s brokerage operations, and what comes next:
Map brokerage operations end to end across these areas: broker onboarding, account carrying, trade clearing/settlement, custody of cash/securities, books & records, financing (if in scope), corporate actions, transfers, exceptions, and reporting
Help define target operating models and capability designs: what the platform must do, what stays manual (for now), what is control vs. feature, what is Canada-specific vs. reusable globally
Turn regulatory and operational obligations into product requirements: what the platform must do, what stays manual (for now), what is control vs. feature, what is Canada-specific vs. reusable globally
Write epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and edge cases that Product and Engineering can build against.
Produce the artifacts teams actually use: process maps, capability matrices, requirement specs, data/field definitions, state machines, exception catalogs, RACI for build vs. run, and decision logs
Work with Product Managers and Engineering to sequence MVP → launch → scale: must-haves for go-live vs. post-launch backlog across these operating areas (e.G. additional account types, asset classes, IB services, automation)
Interface across Product, Engineering, Ops, and Compliance: translate business need into buildable scope;
elevate open decisions with clear owners and options
Run structured discovery: workshops, SME interviews, gap analysis vs. current Alpaca platform, peer operating models where useful
Keep requirements
automation- and AI-aware : flag where STP, rules, and AI-assisted exception handling should be designed in—not bolted on later
Flag where straight-through processing, rules, and AI-assisted exception handling should be designed from the start.
Maintain a living requirements backlog tied to ACCC milestones, risks, and open decisions
Who you are (Must-Haves)
Excited about what Alpaca is building and about standing up Canadian brokerage operations.
Comfortable operating as a senior IC reporting to the President — driving clarity across Product, Engineering, Ops, and Compliance without needing a formal team.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, finance, or equivalent.
8+ years as a business architect, business analyst, consultant or in product operations within brokerage, clearing, custody, or capital markets.
Comfortable translating brokerage operating processes and regulatory requirements into product language (you don’t need to be a lawyer or CCO)
Strong structured analysis: flows, entities, states, exceptions, controls, and what breaks if a step is missing.
Clear writing: specs, diagrams, and decisions others can execute against.
Collaborative with Ops SMEs, PMs, Engineering, and Compliance;
curious enough to dig;
disciplined enough to close loops
Bias to precision over vague “requirements fluff”;
you know when somethingis a product change vs. an ops procedure vs. a policy decision
Judgment to tell a product change from an operating procedure or a policy decision.
Strong communication and collaboration skills across operations, product, engineering, and compliance.
Who you might be (Nice-to-Haves)
Experience on a carrying, self-clearing, or custody build.
Canadian dealer, carrying broker, or introducing broker experience.
Prior business architecture or enterprise/solution architecture exposure in capital markets
Familiarity with CDS or Canadian settlement workflows.
Experience with registered accounts or Canadian tax requirements (TFSA, RRSP, RESP).
Background with API or platform brokerage products.
Experience working at a fintech, startup, or greenfield launch.
AI-native workflow: recurring use of tools like Cursor, Claude, or ChatGPT in spec drafting, discovery synthesis, and gap analysis.
Experience shaping greenfield capability roadmaps with executive sponsors
How We Take Care of You:
Competitive Salary & Stock Options
New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card
Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.
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