Senior Manager - Deal Desk

The Apex Group was established in Bermuda in 2003 and is now one of the world’s largest fund administration and middle office solutions providers.

Our business is unique in its ability to reach globally, service locally and provide cross-jurisdictional services. With our clients at the heart of everything we do, our hard-working team has successfully delivered on an unprecedented growth and transformation journey, and we are now represented by over circa 13,000 employees across 112 offices worldwide.Your career with us should reflect your energy and passion.

That’s why, at Apex Group, we will do more than simply ‘empower’ you. We will work to supercharge your unique skills and experience.

Take the lead and we’ll give you the support you need to be at the top of your game. And we offer you the freedom to be a positive disrupter and turn big ideas into bold, industry-changing realities.

For our business, for clients, and for you

Senior Manager – Deal Desk
Cape Town

Description

This role works alongside the Global Head of Commercial Operations and Deal Strategy, taking point on our most complex commercial pursuits while helping build the governance, process, and systems backbone the wider function will run on. This is a senior, high-trust remit — you'll be shaping frameworks and setting the standard for how Deal Desk operates, not just applying rules someone else wrote

Job specification  

• Partner with Sales and CRM across the full opportunity lifecycle.  You'll embed with Sales from Identify through Closed Won — not just at sign-off — working the opportunity as it develops in the CRM to spot risk early, shape deal strategy while there's still time to influence it, and give Sales a partner who helps them win, not a gate they have to get past. On our most complex pursuits, you're in the deal alongside them: helping build the winning structure, not just reviewing the one they arrived at.
• Own our most complex commercial pursuits.  You'll structure and negotiate advanced, non-standard deals across the full spectrum of our portfolio — from the operational simplicity of Apex Invest subscriptions through to the regulatory and structural complexity of Fund Administration engagements. Where a deal doesn't fit the standard pattern, you're the person who works out what "good" looks like.
• Build the governance and control backbone.  You'll help design and operate the internal control framework and tiered governance model — auto-approval, Deal Desk review, escalation to specialist governance groups — that keeps scoping, control-product approval and commercial sign-off proportionate to actual risk. Governance that protects the business without becoming the reason deals stall.
• Balance commercial value with financial accuracy.  You'll bring real judgement to pricing, margin and deal structure — securing strong commercial outcomes for Apex while ensuring the numbers behind every deal are accurate and hold up under scrutiny, including against revenue recognition principles.
• Be the connective tissue across the business.  You'll build genuine working relationships with Sales, Product Management, Business Operations and Legal — not just transactional signoffs. The best Deal Desk partners earn trust because people want to bring them in early, not because a process forces them to.
• Help design process, systems and automation that pay off.  You'll partner on process and systems design as the function is built, with a sharp eye for where automation genuinely removes friction and returns value — and where it would just add complexity for its own sake.
• Understand the full range of commercial models.  Subscription, usage-based, professional services, complex fee structures across regulated fund administration products — you'll be comfortable moving between them and know what "good commercial outcome" means differently in each.

Skills Required:

• A relevant tertiary qualification
• Significant, senior-level Deal Desk, Commercial Operations, or Revenue Operations experience, ideally including time spent helping build a commercial operations function for a revenue business — not only operating one that already exists
• A genuine track record structuring and closing complex, non-standard commercial deals, working alongside Sales as a partner in winning them — not just approving them after the fact
• Fluency working inside a CRM (Salesforce or equivalent) across the full opportunity lifecycle — you know how to read a pipeline, not just a deal
• Hands-on experience with Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tools, and an understanding of how they connect commercial terms to downstream contract execution and risk
• Strong understanding of internal controls and governance frameworks for deal approval, and why they exist
• Solid financial acumen — pricing, margin, and enough grounding in revenue recognition principles to spot when a deal structure creates downstream risk
• A process-and-systems mindset, with the judgement to know where automation earns its keep
• Comfort operating with velocity without treating governance as an obstacle to route around
• Genuine warmth and credibility as a cross-functional relationship-builder — this role lives in the space between Sales, Product, Business Operations and Legal

What you will get in return:

• A genuinely unique opportunity to be part of an expanding large global business.
• Competitive remuneration commensurate with skills and experience;
• undefined
• undefined 

Disclaimer: Unsolicited CVs sent to Apex (Talent Acquisition Team or Hiring Managers) by recruitment agencies will not be accepted for this position. Apex operates a direct sourcing model and where agency assistance is required, the Talent Acquisition team will engage directly with our exclusive recruitment partners.