Director of Growth & Strategic Operations

Reliance Financial is a privately held originator of small-business financing products, providing up to $15,000,000 to closely held companies, venture-backed startups, public corporations, and private equity portfolio companies. Backed by family office capital, we recently solidified an institutional financing partnership and secondary market relationships, and origination is scaling quickly behind them. We are a small team on a steep growth curve, expanding across new products, new states, and new international markets. The Role The Director of Strategic Operations & Growth owns our back-office-as-a-service platform, the systems and procedures underneath it, and the work of making both better. The role reports to the Head of Business Operations & Capital Markets and inherits an active book of projects that are already underway, resourced, and carry real deadlines. This is a hands-on, technical role. The person leaving it built internal web applications, reporting and automation, system configurations, and the documentation the business runs on. We want someone who does the same rather than writing requirements and handing them off. When a process breaks, the first move should be to open a spreadsheet, a query editor, or a code editor. Back-office-as-a-service is a section of the business we intend to grow substantially, and this role is central to that. We are looking for someone who wants to build it out and grow with it, not manage it as it stands. The work is hands-on and the pace is real. The sections below separate what this role owns outright from where it supports other leaders, so the scope is clear from the start. What You'll Own Back-Office-as-a-Service Platform Build and refine our back-office-as-a-service model for smaller originators and white label partners Standardize partner onboarding end to end, covering entity and licensing structure, banking and payments setup, platform agreements, document execution, and system provisioning Turn onboarding from an internal process into a productized offering with service levels, monitoring, and a reporting package partners value Own ISO and partner channel operations, including due diligence, agreement standards, and commission economics Scale a platform that supports multiple funding operations under one operating standard Systems and Process Infrastructure Own configuration and continuous improvement of our origination and servicing platform, including offer structures, payment schedules, disclosure logic, and partner setup Own our departmental policies and procedures, keeping them versioned, current, and aligned to how the business actually runs Build internal applications where an off-the-shelf system does not reach. We run internally built tools for compliance workflows and operational reporting today, and expect to ship more Work directly with our data. Pull, reconcile, and analyze portfolio, payment, and channel performance yourself rather than waiting for someone to produce a report Use AI tooling as a core part of how you work, and push it considerably further than we have Operational Optimization Analyze and improve performance across origination, underwriting, operations, servicing, and treasury Find where process, systems, or handoffs are costing time, money, or accuracy, and fix them Strengthen operating controls, including approval authorities, segregation of duties, and payment and disbursement verification Build the internal portfolio and performance reporting leadership needs Where You'll Support International Expansion Support the buildout of new international markets, from entity formation and licensing through first origination Help operationalize the underwriting framework, KYC and KYB workflows, vendor stack, and compliance program each new jurisdiction requires Team Buildout and Corporate Development Support strategic hiring across underwriting, portfolio management, and originations Contribute to new capital sources, structured financing, and investor relationships alongside the Head of Business Operations & Capital Markets What We're Looking For On Background Plenty of postings like this ask for consultants. We are asking for operators. Your background can come from specialty finance, fintech, a startup, a family business, the military, or somewhere we have not thought of. What we care about is whether you have run real things under real constraints and shipped them. Operating rigor matters far more to us here than the logo on your resume. Required A track record of running real operations under real constraints, with roughly five or more years of substantive operating experience. What you have built and shipped matters more than where you did it. Genuine technical fluency. Advanced in spreadsheets, comfortable working with data directly in SQL or an equivalent, and has built and shipped internal tools using code, low-code platforms, or AI-assisted development. This is not an engineering role, but it does require someone who builds rather than delegates. Hands-on experience configuring or implementing an origination or servicing platform, banking portal, e-signature workflow, or vendor integrations Ability to take a broken process or a new requirement and turn it into a system change, a procedure, or a working tool, and then ship it Experience building or scaling a platform, partner program, or shared services function Proven ability to run complex, cross-functional projects to completion without direct authority over most of the people involved The appetite to work at the pace of a small team growing quickly, and the judgment to know what can wait Preferred Background in lending, specialty finance, or fintech. Helpful, but we will take a strong operator who can learn a regulated business quickly. Financial modeling capability, useful here but not the core of the job Hybrid. The first month will be in person at our Toms River, NJ office. After, one day a week in our Toms River, NJ office, with the remainder remote or from our Manhattan office. Occasional travel to our South Florida HQ. #J-18808-Ljbffr Reliance Financial