Product Manager, Clearing Systems

Your Role

Alpaca is building the next generation of global brokerage and clearing infrastructure. We are looking for a senior product manager who can own the clearing systems product lifecycle at a rapidly scaling self-clearing broker-dealer. 

Your mission is to build and operate the systems and processes that keep Alpaca accurate, compliant, and on time across areas like core brokerage, clearing, ledger, custody, money movement, and multi-currency infrastructure. You will make clearing scale reliably as Alpaca adds asset classes, account types, trading hours, and partner institutions, and as we run a true self-clearing book at DTCC, OCC, and FICC.

This person should be able to walk into ambiguity, understand the full clearing lifecycle, design the architecture, build a working prototype, and lead a team toward production-grade infrastructure. The role sits at the intersection of product, engineering, operations, finance, compliance, and regulatory infrastructure.

What You’ll Own

You will lead the design and buildout of Alpaca’s core clearing infrastructure across brokerage, custody, ledger, asset movement, and global market expansion.

This includes:

• Defining the long-term architecture for Alpaca’s clearing platform across accounts, positions, balances, ledgers, journals, settlements, stock record, and regulatory books and records.
• Designing multi-currency cash and position systems that can support global equities, FX, fractional trading, options, bonds, Treasuries, fixed income, mutual funds, and other asset classes.
• Partnering with engineering to prototype and build new clearing services rather than relying only on third-party service bureau workflows.
• Working cross-functionally with operations, finance, treasury, compliance, legal, risk, and product to ensure the platform is scalable, controlled, and regulator-ready.
• Translating complex clearing, custody, and regulatory requirements into clear product and engineering requirements.
• Helping Alpaca grow from U.S.-centric brokerage infrastructure into a global, multi-asset, multi-currency clearing platform.

Who You Are (Must-Haves)

• 5+ years in Product Management, technical program management, or engineering on brokerage, clearing, or post-trade infrastructure.
• 10+ years of experience in brokerage, clearing, custody, prime brokerage, trading infrastructure, financial market infrastructure, or capital markets technology.
• Demonstrated depth on at least one clearing surface: settlement and stock record, books and records, corporate actions, margin, ACATS, DTCC processing.
• Highly technical. Ability to work directly with engineers and product teams to turn complex domain requirements into scalable system designs.
• Comfort shipping in parallel with Compliance, Legal, and Operations in a regulated broker-dealer environment. 
• Strong operating judgment  to weigh risk, operational efficiency, capital allocation, tech feasibility, time, and budget.
• Experience leading senior teams and influencing across functions in a high-growth environment.

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves)

• You helped build, convert, or modernize corporate-action processing, a security master, or a self-clearing back office.
• Experience with global brokerage expansion, including international equities, FX, local market custody, omnibus models, sub-ledgers, and currency controls.
• Familiarity with the B2B2C correspondent / broker-as-a-service model.
• AI-native PM workflow: recurring use of tools like Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, or custom agents in PRD drafting, incident synthesis, data exploration, and prototyping.

 

Example Problems You Should Be Comfortable Solving

• How should stock record reconcile to DTC, custodians, omnibus providers, internal ledgers, trading systems, and customer-facing balances?
• How should global equities, FX, fractional shares, options, fixed income, Treasuries, and mutual funds fit into one clearing architecture?
• How should a multi-currency brokerage ledger represent trades, settlements, FX conversions, fees, financing, journals, and custody balances?
• How should cashiering, ACH, wires, ACATS, journals, reversals, and transfer exceptions be represented in ledger and operations systems?
• How should possession or control, segregation, fully paid lending, margin, reserve, and reconciliation controls be embedded into the platform instead of handled as manual after-the-fact processes?