Executive Search Lead

About the Role

Building the Future of Open FinancePayward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.The teamWe re an agile, globally distributed talent acquisition team with the creativity, expertise and ambition to revolutionize talent attraction — built around productivity and a 6-star candidate experience. Our norms are direct, our decisions are fast, and we expect people to operate without scaffolding.This role sits in the Talent team and runs as a Payward-wide shared service across Payward, NinjaTrader, Reap and future acquisitions. It reports to our Global Head of Talent Acquisition with a dotted line to our Chief People Officer.Executive recruiting here is its own discipline — smaller rooms, higher stakes, the same directness and speed we expect everywhere else. Discretion is part of the craft: this hire will handle confidential searches, sensitive succession conversations and market intelligence that never leaves the room, and will be trusted to hold all of it. They ll work directly with our Board, C-Suite and broader Payward leadership team on a daily basis. The opportunityOwn executive recruiting end to end across the Payward platform spanning C-level, Board, VP+ and bespoke Advisor mandates.Partner directly with the Co-CEOs and the executive team on the searches that matter most, absorbing their pace and operating as a trusted advisor.Run board and advisory mandates with the discretion they require. Confidentiality here is structural, not a preference.Define how executive hiring scales as a shared service across a growing, multi-brand platform.Own the external search partner strategy: managing relationships with key ...