VP, Operational Excellence - Investment Operations - Liberty Mutual Investments

Liberty Mutual•Boston, MA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Liberty Mutual Investments (LMI) is seeking an experienced operations and controls professional to join our Investment Operations function as Vice President, Operational Excellence. This is a newly created, high-impact role purpose-built to assess and strengthen the health of daily operations across the full investment operations platform. This role serves as the function’s first-line lead for operational health — responsible for evaluating operational risk, testing the effectiveness of the controls designed to mitigate that risk, identifying process and control gaps, and driving their remediation to closure across all operating teams: Treasury Services, Cash & Trade Operations, Derivatives Operations, Loan Operations, Alternatives Operations, Shared Services, and Investment Accounting Operations. The role reports to the Head of Investment Accounting Operations, with its function-wide mandate sponsored by the Head of Operational Strategy & Delivery. Beyond assessment, the role owns the operational KPI and metrics framework and the operational-health reporting that informs functional governance, and partners closely with Strategy & Execution’s Transformation team to convert findings into durable, delivered fixes. This is a first-line operational-excellence role embedded in the business; it coordinates with — and is distinct from — second-line Risk and Internal Audit, and does not provide independent assurance. The ideal candidate is a skilled collaborator who understands the downstream impact of operational decisions and can influence peer teams without direct authority. This is a high-impact individual contributor role with the opportunity to grow into a people management capacity as the function scales.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in finance, Business, Accounting, or a related field
10+ years of experience in investment operations, financial operations, or operational risk and controls, ideally within an asset manager, insurer, alternative investment firm, or comparable institutional investment platform
Demonstrated experience in operational risk assessment, control design and effectiveness testing, or RCSA-type programs
Strong understanding of the investment operations lifecycle across multiple asset classes — including loans, derivatives, alternatives, and cash/treasury
Experience defining and operating metrics and KPIs and translating operational data into governance-ready reporting
Familiarity with loan administration and accounting systems, IBOR and ABOR environments, and how data flows across a multi-system operations infrastructure
Highly effective collaborator with proven experience influencing peer teams without direct authority in a matrixed organization; able to raise risks and represent stakeholder perspectives in a constructive, solutions-oriented manner

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree (e.g., MBA) a plus
Relevant risk/controls or process-improvement certifications (e.g., Lean Six Sigma) preferred but not required

Responsibilities

Design and run a recurring, first-line risk and control self-assessment across all seven operating teams, producing a current-state view of where daily execution is fragile
Maintain a living map of operational risks, the controls intended to mitigate them, and the residual risk that remains after those controls
Bring an industry-aware lens to what strong operational controls look like across asset classes and lifecycle stages
Test whether controls are operating as designed
Identify process and control gaps, prioritize them at the function level based on risk, and own them through to closure
Trace the upstream root causes of downstream breaks and not-in-good-order conditions, championing systemic, durable fixes over one-off corrections
Document assessment evidence
Own the operational KPI framework and the run-state operational-health reporting that feeds functional governance forums
Translate operational data into a clear, decision-ready view of functional health for senior leadership
Align metrics and definitions consistently across teams and systems of record
Serve as the demand-side partner to Strategy & Execution’s Transformation team, converting diagnosed gaps into a prioritized remediation backlog
Coordinate with Product Owners to ensure product backlogs reflect operations requirements and priorities
Ensure delivered solutions close the underlying operational risk rather than addressing symptoms
Identify and advance automation and process-improvement opportunities, including practical application of AI tooling
Run the operational-health governance routine (chaired and sponsored by the Head of OS&D), presenting current-state assessment, open gaps, and remediation status with items assigned to process owners and dates
Proactively raise operational risks, process concerns, and stakeholder impacts in a constructive, solutions-oriented manner
Coordinate with second-line Risk and Internal Audit to align scope and avoid duplication of assurance activity
Serve as a trusted operational partner and subject-matter expert across investment, accounting, technology, data, and treasury teams
Assess the operational performance of external service providers through a risk-and-control lens
Communicate process changes, improvement initiatives, and strategic priorities clearly to senior stakeholders