Head of Advisor Transitions

Job Description Summary

This position follows our hybrid-friendly schedule, so you get the best of both worlds – flexibility and collaboration. In office days will be 3 per week averaging 12 days per month in our St. Petersburg, FL Corporate Office.

The Head for the Transition Management team plays a critical leadership role in driving the strategic planning, execution, and continuous improvement of operational initiatives that support the seamless onboarding and integration of new financial advisors (and their teams). This role is responsible for overseeing end-to-end transition processes, aligning cross-functional teams, and ensuring a high-quality experience for both advisors and clients.

As a key contributor to the department’s overall strategy, the Head of Transitions will lead efforts to optimize workflows, implement scalable solutions, and enhance service delivery. This position requires a forward-thinking leader with strong operational expertise, a deep understanding of the financial services landscape, and a passion for delivering excellence in advisor support.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Planning & Execution: Collaborate with executive leadership to align transition operations with firm-wide strategic goals. Monitor KPIs and performance metrics to assess transition success and operational effectiveness. Lead cross-functional initiatives to improve advisor onboarding and retention.

• Project & Change Management: Manage multiple concurrent transition projects & initiatives, ensuring timely execution and adherence to regulatory requirements. Monitor progress, track milestones, and provide regular updates to senior leadership.

• Compliance & Risk Management: Ensure all transition activities comply with FINRA, SEC, and internal regulatory standards. Partner with Legal and Compliance teams to mitigate risk and maintain audit readiness.

• Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of managers, transition consultants, project managers, and operations specialists. Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and client-centric service. Manage staffing, training, and performance evaluations to ensure team excellence.

• Technology & Systems Integration: Oversee the implementation and optimization of technology platforms used in advisor transitions. Collaborate with IT and digital teams to enhance automation, data accuracy, and user experience. Evaluate new tools and systems to support operational scalability and innovation.

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Other Responsibilities:

• Take overall responsibility for designing, developing, and delivering the organization's operational strategy and outcomes.

• Take overall responsibility for setting and approving area budgets that achieve organizational strategy.

• Manage and report on business performance; hold direct reports accountable for achievement of business plans, and take corrective action where necessary to ensure the achievement of business objectives, balancing the need to deliver short-term business objectives with the longer-term delivery of stakeholder value.

• Lead the development of annual and longer-term business plans for a significant function or small local business, ensuring alignment with strategy; quantify business outcomes, i.e., revenues or other key performance indicators (KPIs) and resource budgets (financial and headcount); and ensure integration of key activities or projects across the organization.

• Set and communicate the strategy, along with the broad actions needed to implement it, for achieving the organization's mission, vision, and values within a function; inspire a large or diverse workforce to commit to these tenets and do extraordinary things to achieve the organization's business goals.

• Identify and manage stakeholders up to and including top management level, finding out their needs, issues, and concerns and reacting to them by leading and coordinating the development of stakeholder engagement plans to support the communication of business information and decisions.

• Develop the strategy for a significant area of responsibility, such as a function, anticipating complex issues, challenges, and opportunities. Ensure the strategy is successfully implemented and meets medium-term business needs.

• Represent the organization or institution in a variety of industry, institutional, and/or professional forums, boards, and committees, in order to promote the company or institution brand or efforts. Represent the organization in external relations with investors, clients, industry, partners, the public, and others. Focus is on a specific area of the organization, such as a function or department. May involve preparation of presentations and materials for professional partnering meetings, seminars, and conferences.

• Identify the capabilities needed to meet the current and emerging business needs of a significant business area. Evaluate current capabilities, identify gaps, and prioritize development activities. Motivate others to develop their capabilities and fulfill their personal potential. Build capabilities elsewhere in the organization through mentoring and other informal methods.

• Define the detailed organization structure for a business area to align with corporate principles, define the relationship between elements of the organization, and define the responsibilities of senior managers, to enable the organization to achieve its business objectives.

• Participate in the development of corporate strategy for a small local organization, applying functional expertise to test the viability of the strategy and contributing creative ideas and insights to support the strategy formation process.

Skills:

• Applies expertise to act as the organizational authority on developing appropriate plans or performing necessary actions based on recommendations and requirements.

• Uses expertise to act as organizational authority on planning, organizing, prioritizing and overseeing activities to efficiently meet business objectives.

• Operates as a recognized expert to shift into and out of a mental mindsets associated with assessing the facts and circumstances of the current situation and/or environment and making the appropriate/innovative adjustments to thinking and work habits to thrive in any scenario.  Typically known as a subject matter authority.

• Uses expertise to act as organizational authority on strategic planning.

• Applies expertise to act as the organizational authority on making sure the organization develops and maintains the culture, values and design it needs to reach its objectives while managing structural change.

• Uses expertise to act as the organizational authority on developing, monitoring, interpreting and understanding policies and procedures, while making sure they match organizational strategies and objectives.

• Uses expertise to act as organizational authority on developing and implementing policies.

• Uses expertise to act as the organizational authority on managing projects and/or programs within desired cost, time and quality parameters.

• Acts with expertise as the organization's authority on using clear and effective verbal communications skills to express ideas, request actions and formulate plans or policies.

• Acts as the organization's authority and established expert to develop solutions based on an understanding of the business environment and objectives.

• Acts as the organizational authority and established expert on costing, budgeting and finance tasks.

• Negotiates as the organizational authority and established expert to help the organization by obtaining consensus between two or more internal or external parties who may have different interests.

• Uses expertise to acts as the organizational authority on reviewing and creating relevant, lucid and effective reports.

• Operates as a recognized expert to orient work in a workflow to plan, organize, and execute the steps it takes to achieve a goal to achieve higher efficiencies.  Typically known as a subject matter authority.

Licenses/Certifications:

• SIE required or ability to obtain within 120 days (as required by FINRA), provided that an exemption or grandfathering cannot be applied.

• Series 99 required, or ability to obtain within 120 days (as required by FINRA). Persons holding Series 6, 7, 17, 37 or 38 or those who hold principal-level registrations: Series 4, 9/10, 14, 16, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 51, and 53 would be qualified to register as an Operations Professional (Series 99) without passing the examination.

• Series 7 - Not required, but highly preferred.

Education

High School (HS) (Required)

Work Experience

General Experience - More than 15 years, Manager Experience - 10 to 15 years

Certifications

OS - Operations Professional - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Securities Industry Essentials Exam (SIE) - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)

Travel

Less than 25%

Workstyle

Hybrid

At Raymond James our associates use five guiding behaviors (Develop, Collaborate, Decide, Deliver, Improve) to deliver on the firm's core values of client-first, integrity, independence and a conservative, long-term view. 

We expect our associates at all levels to:
•  Grow professionally and inspire others to do the same
•  Work with and through others to achieve desired outcomes
•  Make prompt, pragmatic choices and act with the client in mind
•  Take ownership and hold themselves and others accountable for delivering results that matter
•  Contribute to the continuous evolution of the firm

At Raymond James – as part of our people-first culture, we honor, value, and respect the uniqueness, experiences, and backgrounds of all of our Associates.  When associates bring their best authentic selves, our organization, clients, and communities thrive. The Company is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions on the basis of merit and business needs. 

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