Associate Wealth Advisor

Sophronia Wealth Advisors is a flat fee-only Wealth Management firm. We are seeking an Associate Wealth Advisor for our Irvine, California office to support our expanding group of business owners and retirees. You will join a three-person advisory team alongside our Founding Partner and Wealth Advisor and our Client Service Associate. This is not a production role. You are not expected to bring a book of business, prospect, or meet sales quotas. Sophronia will generate client relationships. Your responsibility is to help the team understand clients, prepare sound advice, enhance meetings, and ensure decisions are implemented. How the advisory triangle works The triangle is a shared service model with clear ownership, not three people duplicating one another's work. Look for the recent article on the Kitces’ Blog about it for full context. Founding Partner / Wealth Advisor: owns primary relationship leadership, final planning judgment, complex advice, and the Associate Advisor's coaching and development. Associate Wealth Advisor: prepares analyses, frames decisions, drafts recommendations, participates actively in meetings, and assumes greater responsibility as capability and trust grow. Client Service Associate: owns service workflows, documentation, scheduling, account and custodian processes, and reliable follow-through. Initially, you will work closely with the Founding Partner, Miguel Gomez. As your judgment and fluency develop, you will lead portions of meetings, manage routine client conversations, and eventually become the primary advisor for selected relationships. The goal is deliberate development toward Lead Advisor responsibility. What you will own Prepare for discovery, planning, decision, implementation, and ongoing client meetings. Understand each client's priorities, tradeoffs, family dynamics, and definition of a good life, and keep these factors central to your analysis. Develop cash-flow analysis, tax-aware, risk-management, estate-coordination, and other planning analyses and draft recommendations for advisor review. Support investment recommendations and portfolio-management decisions within Sophronia's investment process. Attend client meetings, contribute meaningfully, and lead increasingly substantial portions as you develop. Prepare clear meeting recaps, outline next actions, and document decisions. Coordinate execution with the Client Service Associate and verify completion of commitments. Communicate directly with clients on routine planning and service matters within the scope of your experience and responsibility. Coordinate thoughtfully with clients' CPAs, attorneys, insurance professionals, and other advisers. Maintain accurate records and promptly identify risks, open questions, and missed commitments. Contribute to refining the team's playbooks, meeting cadence, and service standards as Sophronia grows. The Sophronia Way At Sophronia, a "comprehensive financial plan 100-page document" is not the deliverable. The planning experience is the core of our work: an ongoing fiduciary relationship where clients feel understood, make informed decisions, and see those decisions implemented. Fiduciary by design. We are flat-fee and fee-only. Our only product is our advice. Clarity first. We make complex choices understandable and acknowledge uncertainty where it exists. Experience matters. We evaluate planning by the quality of conversations, decisions that we help our clients make, coordination with clients and their team of professionals, and follow-through. Warmth with rigor. Clients deserve technical competence, patience, humanity, and respect. Ownership. Good service results from clear ownership, consistent workflows, open communication, and a team that fulfills its commitments. Curiosity and humility. We expect strong judgment, not advice with unrealistic certainty. We learn, ask, and improve together. Our Clients Most of our clients are Spanish-speaking business owners and immigrant entrepreneurs and professionals. Serving this community with cultural fluency is essential to our identity. What success looks like In the first 90 days Learn Sophronia's planning philosophy, client experience, investment approach, technology, and operating system, which we call “The Sophronia Way.” Build trust with the Founding Partner and Client Service Associate; ensure smooth handoffs and consistently close communication loops. Prepare analyses, agendas, and follow-up materials with increasing accuracy and independence. Observe client meetings, contribute as appropriate, and begin leading designated segments. During the first 6-12 months Independently prepare planning analyses and draft recommendations for business-owner and retiree relationships. Lead substantial portions of recurring meetings and selected meetings from beginning to end. Serve as a trusted point of contact for assigned clients while maintaining clear escalation and review protocols. Increase capacity for the Founding Partner without compromising planning quality or client experience. Provide practitioner feedback as Sophronia tests and refines its retiree offering. You will not be responsible for developing the marketing channel. Path to Lead Advisor This role is intended to develop into a Lead Advisor position over 12 to 24 months. Promotion is based on demonstrated judgment, meeting leadership, communication, delegation, operational discipline, and readiness to assume primary responsibility for client relationships, not tenure. At maturity, a Lead Advisor within the team should be able to serve about 60 ongoing relationships, depending on client complexity and mix. Who may thrive here You hold or are actively completing CFP® certification. We support candidates in the final stages of the process. You have sufficient client-facing experience to contribute confidently in meetings and the potential to lead them. You understand investments and tax-aware planning and recognize when specialist coordination is required. You are comfortable serving business owners, retirees, or both. Deep expertise in only one niche is not required. You are operationally disciplined: you document, delegate, follow up, and ensure important details are addressed. You are humble, curious, coachable, and willing to challenge ideas respectfully when it benefits the client. You’re comfortable working in a technology-enabled practice, learn new systems quickly, and are willing to become proficient in: Wealthbox, Trello, Elements, IncomeLab and RightCapital. Prior experience with one or more of these platforms is very helpful but not required. You communicate clearly in writing and in meetings. You want to work closely with a small team in person at our Irvine office and are eager to grow with a developing firm. Spanish fluency is required. Cultural fluency with the Latino business-owner community is essential for this role. We prefer candidates with 2 to 4 years of planning and client-meeting experience, though we will consider strong candidates outside this range. Judgment, learning agility, and the potential to become a primary advisor matter more than years in the industry. You do not need to bring a book of business. Compensation and progression Associate compensation is not tied to prospecting or the number of clients assigned by Sophronia. First 90 days: Structured onboarding period at $83,000 annualized, covering onboarding, technical work, and increasing client participation. After onboarding: Upon successful completion of documented standards, the position transitions to a salaried Associate Wealth Advisor role at $90,000 to $100,000. Development: Formal reviews at approximately six and 12 months, with ongoing coaching between reviews. Lead Advisor path: $120,000 to $135,000 upon promotion and $150,000 after sustained primary responsibility for 20 relationships. Compensation beyond this point will be reviewed as the role and firm evolve. Benefits package: Eligible for 401(k) with profit sharing and up to 4% match at 6 months, immediate vesting at that point. Fifteen days of PTO and paid holidays. Work arrangement This is a local, in-office role based at Sophronia's Irvine office: 6 Venture, Suite 310, Irvine, CA 92618. We are building a collaborative advisory team, and regular in-person interaction is required. #J-18808-Ljbffr Sophronia Wealth Advisors