Director, US Operations - Kraken Securities
Payward, Inc. is the parent company and operating platform behind Kraken and a portfolio spanning trading, custody, payments, lending, tokenized assets, onchain finance, and benchmarks.
Funding history
Investors
Projects
About Payward, Inc.
Payward operates unified financial infrastructure across crypto and traditional markets, including shared liquidity, risk and margin systems, collateral and settlement, compliance, and licensing. Its first-party portfolio includes Kraken, Kraken Pro, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, CF Benchmarks, Reap, Krak, Kraken Prime, Kraken OTC, Kraken Custody, and Bitnomial.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead operations for Payward's US equities business, including the registered broker-dealer Kraken Securities LLC and the xStocks tokenized equities product. You will own the trade operating model, order and settlement flow, cash flows, corporate actions, reconciliations and regulatory readiness. As a registered principal named on Form BD, you will be accountable for the operational side of regulatory obligations while partnering with Compliance, Legal, Finance, Product, Engineering and Marketing and building the team that scales the business.
Requirements
- 12+ years of experience in brokerage or fintech operations or operations consulting, including time inside a FINRA-registered broker-dealer
- Experience in crypto, brokerage, advisory, fintech or another highly regulated industry
- In-depth knowledge of execution, clearing, settlement, custody, margin, securities lending and corporate actions
- Working understanding of digital assets and tokenized securities
- Direct experience operating under SEC and FINRA rules
- Experience standing up or scaling operations for a new regulated product or entity
- Experience hiring, managing and developing operations teams
- FINRA Series 7, Series 99 and Series 24 at hire or within an agreed window
- Eligible for registration and disclosure on Form BD
- Series 63/65/66 as required by state registration
Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end order flow for US equities from inception through clearing and settlement
- Own xStocks operations including token issuance and redemption, inventory and liquidity management, and settlement
- Serve as a named principal of Kraken Securities LLC and provide dual-approval sign-off on transactions and asset movements
- Design and implement the operating model for Kraken Securities and xStocks
- Build and run policies, written supervisory procedures, controls, books and records, business continuity and KPIs
- Own launch readiness for new products and markets
- Partner with Finance on financial controls around bank payments, customer funds and reserve requirements
- Ensure desk coverage and settlement and reconciliation controls to support 24x5 and 24x7 operations
- Own vendor and partner operations including onboarding, SLAs and oversight
- Own severity-1 escalation and incident response including root-cause review
- Set performance targets and report KPIs and costs to leadership
- Hire and develop a high-performing operations team and build succession plans
- Partner with cross-functional leaders and support HR and IT in building procedures
Benefits
- Bonus program
- Equity program
- Wellness allowance
- Medical, dental, vision (US only)
- 401(k) (US only)
