Head of Cash & Trading Operations

This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious operations leader to shape and lead a critical part of Vanguard Personal Investor’s operating model. As Head of Core Investment Operations, you will take ownership of the teams and processes that sit at the heart of our client and investment platform experience across Trading, Portfolio Management, Payments and Liquidity. You will play a pivotal role in strengthening operational performance, protecting client assets, enhancing controls and helping Vanguard continue to deliver outstanding outcomes as the business grows.
This role offers the opportunity to set direction, build capability and lead meaningful change across a high-impact operational environment. You will bring energy, pace and judgement to the way we execute, improve and transform, creating a culture of ownership, curiosity, strong controls and continuous improvement. Working closely with internal teams and outsourced providers, you will ensure operational change is delivered safely, sustainably and with clear control over client, regulatory and service impacts.
We are looking for someone who thrives in a fast-paced regulated environment, can bring clarity to complexity, and is motivated by the chance to make a positive difference to service quality, operational resilience, control effectiveness and change delivery.

Key duties:

• Hires, evaluates, and supervises crew. Provides guidance and training as necessary to develop crew. Sets performance standards, reviews performance, and makes informed compensation decisions in accordance with all applicable Human Resources policies and procedures.
• Leads day-to-day operations across Trading, Portfolio Management, Payments and Liquidity, ensuring effective execution, issue management, service performance and operational resilience.
• Owns and strengthens the control environment across regulated operational activities, including control identification, design, implementation, testing and ongoing effectiveness, with appropriate focus on CASS-related obligations and client asset protection.
• Serves as senior escalation point for complex operational, control and client-impacting matters, ensuring timely resolution, clear communication and effective mitigation of risks arising across trading, portfolio activity, cash movement, payments and liquidity processes.
• Leads development and delivery of operational performance, risk and control reporting, ensuring meaningful insight into service levels, exceptions, incidents, reconciliations, liquidity indicators and emerging risks.
• Drives an ambitious continuous improvement agenda across operational processes, using data, colleague insight, risk events and client outcomes to simplify activity, strengthen controls and improve service quality.
• Leads operational change agendas with confidence and discipline, ensuring change is appropriately planned, risk assessed, governed, tested, embedded and monitored, with clear accountability for readiness and post-implementation outcomes.
• Builds strong working relationships with senior internal stakeholders, outsourced service providers and second- and third-line partners to ensure operational delivery, governance and control expectations are clearly understood and consistently met.
• Represents Vanguard externally at industry forums and working committees.
• Maintains strong awareness of relevant regulatory, industry and operational developments, including CASS, payments, trading, market operations, liquidity and outsourcing expectations, and determines applicability to the operation.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Competencies:

• Strong knowledge of investment platform operations, including trading, portfolio management, payments, liquidity, reconciliations and exception management.
• Good understanding of CASS principles and client asset protection requirements, with the ability to apply these practically within operational processes and controls.
• Ability to interpret regulatory requirements and translate them into clear operational standards, controls, reporting and governance across internal teams and outsourced providers.
• Strong commercial and operational judgement, with the ability to balance client outcomes, regulatory obligations, risk appetite, service quality and delivery priorities.
• Strong continuous improvement mindset, with the ability to identify root causes, simplify processes, improve controls and embed sustainable operational enhancements.
• Ability to lead operational change safely, balancing pace of delivery with effective governance, risk assessment, control readiness, stakeholder engagement and business adoption.
• Confident senior stakeholder management, communication and leadership skills, with proven ability to lead through ambiguity, influence outcomes and build high-performing teams.

Professional qualifications:

Relevant professional qualification such as Level 3 – Investment Operations Certificate (IOC) – Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), or equivalent investment operations qualification, and

Relevant CASS training, certification or demonstrable practical experience applying CASS requirements within investment operations, client money, custody, reconciliations or oversight environments, and/or

Additional relevant qualification in financial services, risk, controls, operations, payments or investment management desirable.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.