Director, Product Capabilities Lead

HarbourVest Partners•Boston, MA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

HarbourVest is a global firm with a forty-year history of providing impactful solutions to clients and investing partners. We foster a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking, with low turnover and high energy. We are committed to inclusion and mutual respect, optimizing the potential of both individuals and the firm. This position operates under a hybrid work arrangement, offering 18 remote workdays per quarter, subject to manager approval. The Director, Product Capabilities Technology Lead collaborates with the Vice President of Wealth Information Technology in Boston, manages one direct report, and has broad matrix influence across technology, operations, and delivery partners. This role is crucial for building the technology and data capabilities that support new investment products, ongoing fund operations, and client delivery. The Director will lead the technology and data strategy for Product Capabilities and serve as the data platform lead for information from third-party administrators. Key responsibilities include connecting product decisions with practical technology requirements for various fund structures, and bringing together fund operations, product development, data platform teams, and external partners. The role requires maintaining an enterprise-wide view of administrator data demand and aligning requirements, sequencing, delivery quality, and vendor performance. The Director will manage one employee directly and lead broader teams through influence.

Requirements

More than eight years of experience in fund administration, fund operations technology, or wealth platform technology.
At least two years in a role where you set priorities rather than only following them.
Practical experience in fund administration, transfer agency, fund operations technology, or wealth platform technology.
Judgment to set priorities and lead across organizational boundaries.
Solid understanding of fund administration data, including net asset value reporting, holdings and positions, trade activity, security reference data, cash and capital activity, and investor or subscription records.
Experience connecting at least one fund or vehicle with an administrator or transfer agent.
Strong SQL skills to profile data, identify loss or duplication, and challenge technical conclusions constructively.
Understanding of modern cloud data platforms, including layered or medallion architecture, data lineage, and snapshot versus point-in-time data.
Delivery experience across concurrent workstreams, including backlog management, user acceptance testing, cutover, and oversight of delivery partners or systems integrators.
Experience managing at least one employee or developing analysts through matrix leadership.
Clear written and verbal communication at executive and working levels.
Ability to connect strategy with execution, make clear tradeoffs, and create structure as operating models evolve.
Enjoy bringing teams together, solving complex data challenges, and helping new products launch successfully.

Nice To Haves

Experience with private markets fund structures, evergreen or semi-liquid vehicles, periodic subscriptions, redemptions and tenders, net asset value cycles, and capital calls is strongly preferred.
Exposure to Luxembourg or Irish fund regimes, Azure DevOps, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Snowflake or another cloud data warehouse, or Python for data profiling is helpful but not required.

Responsibilities

Own the technology and data roadmap for third-party administrators, prioritizing demand, dependencies, capacity, and sequencing across vendors and enterprise initiatives.
Lead administrator technology relationships, including data commitments, specifications, onboarding, and resolution of defects that block delivery.
Translate business needs into clear requirements and source-to-target mappings so engineering teams can build with confidence.
Unite data architects, modelers, data owners, operations teams, project managers, analysts, and business leaders around shared data products and priorities.
Create reconciliation and data quality controls, identify root causes, and drive data issues through resolution.
Turn product structures, distribution models, and operating decisions into system configurations, data feeds, vendor requirements, and technology plans.
Evaluate downstream impacts across the data platform, CRM, reporting, and client-facing applications for each launch.
Drive launch readiness through test strategy, parallel runs, cutover planning, and clear go or no-go recommendations.
Maintain transparent backlogs, dependencies, risks, and status reporting while balancing concurrent launches within available capacity.
Coach one direct report, strengthen analysis and documentation practices across Wealth Technology, and represent our team in product and data governance forums.