What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director of Growth & Strategic Operations position at Reliance Financial?
Overview
Reliance Financial is a privately held, growth-focused originator of small-business financing products. We provide financing up to $15,000,000 for closely held companies, venture-backed startups, publicly traded corporations, and private equity portfolio companies. Backed by family office capital and a strategic partnership with an institutional specialty finance firm, we are scaling rapidly and launching new business lines globally.
This role will lead corporate development, strategic initiatives, and operational scaling efforts, as a part of the executive team to drive the company’s next phase of growth.
This role will be a hybrid with in office time (2-3 days per week) required at our new Toms River New Jersey office.
Platform Growth
- Build and refine a “back-office-as-a-service” model for smaller originators
- Standardize onboarding, reporting, and operational support for partner books
- Help scale a platform that aggregates and supports multiple funding operations
Geographic Expansion
- Support buildout of new markets, starting with Canada
- Establish underwriting frameworks, operational process, and compliance coordination for new regions
- Support future international expansion plans
Business Operations & Optimization
- Analyze and improve performance across origination, underwriting, servicing, and capital markets
- Drive process improvements, automation, and systems implementation
- Build scalable infrastructure to support increased deal volume and new verticals
Strategic Hiring & Team Buildout
- Lead strategic hiring initiatives across underwriting, portfolio management, and originations
- Design organizational structure to support scale and new product lines
- Partner with leadership to recruit and onboard high-impact talent
Departmental Exposure
- Origination – deal sourcing strategy, partnerships, channel development
- Underwriting – credit policy, risk frameworks, approval processes
- Operations – workflow optimization, systems, automation
- Servicing – portfolio monitoring, collections strategy, treasury
- Capital Markets – new capital sources, structured financing, investor relationships
- New Business Lines – incubation and launch of affiliated financial products and services
Candidate Profile
- 5–7 years of experience in private credit, specialty finance, fintech lending, alternative lending, or consulting
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skillset (financial modeling is a plus, not the core focus)
- Experience improving processes, building systems, or scaling operations
- Proven ability to manage complex, cross-functional projects
- Highly entrepreneurial with a strong bias toward execution
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-growth entrepeneurial environment