Head of Business Development - Crypto

As Head of Business Development for Crypto at Alpaca, you'll lead commercial expansion in the tokenized equity space. You'll work directly on relationships and infrastructure that connect issuers, market makers, and exchanges to Alpaca's Instant Tokenization Network. This is a rare opportunity to build and scale the commercial backbone of a genuinely new market category at the firm that pioneered it. You'll report into the Director of Business Development with significant scope for ownership and growth as the network scales.

What you'll do

• Identify, develop, and manage relationships with issuers, liquidity providers, and market makers looking to participate in the tokenized equity ecosystem
• Act as a trusted point of contact for prospective and existing partners, understanding their goals and matching them to Alpaca's tokenization infrastructure
• Support commercial negotiations and structure partnership terms in collaboration with Legal and Compliance
• Own the end-to-end onboarding process for new issuers and market makers joining the Instant Tokenization Network, ensuring a smooth, well-coordinated experience
• Work closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Engineering to translate partner requirements into onboarding workflows and technical integrations, and ensure a seamless handoff post go-live
• Track and report on pipeline, onboarding status, and network growth metrics to senior leadership
• Play a hands-on role in growing Alpaca's Instant Tokenization Network, helping define partnership models, liquidity structures, and go-to-market approach for on-chain equities
• Build and cultivate partnerships across the broader digital asset ecosystem, including wallets, custodians, exchanges, and other crypto-native infrastructure, to expand Alpaca's footprint beyond tokenized equities
• Identify and qualify prospects for Alpaca's Broker API where relevant, working closely with Sales to hand off and progress opportunities that extend beyond the tokenization network
• Represent Alpaca at industry events and in partner conversations as a knowledgeable voice on tokenized equities and market structure
• Stay closely tuned to the regulatory and competitive landscape for digital assets and tokenized securities, feeding insights back into strategy

What you bring

• 5+ years of experience in business development, partnerships, or institutional sales within financial services, fintech, capital markets, or crypto/digital assets
• Familiarity with market maker, liquidity provider, or issuer relationships, ideally within equities, ETFs, or digital asset markets
• Strong understanding of (or strong appetite to quickly learn) tokenization, blockchain-based settlement, and digital asset market structure
• Working knowledge of crypto and digital asset regulations such as licensing regimes, custody requirements, and securities classification issues, and how they shape partnership and go-to-market decisions
• Excellent relationship management and negotiation skills, with the ability to manage multiple partner relationships and onboarding workstreams simultaneously
• Comfort working cross-functionally with Sales, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, Legal, and Compliance teams in a fast-moving, remote-first environment
• Self-starter mentality with strong organizational skills and a bias toward action

Nice to have

• Prior experience at a broker-dealer, exchange, market maker, or crypto-native firm
• Existing network of relationships among issuers, market makers, or liquidity providers
• Experience working on tokenization, RWA (real-world asset), or on-chain market infrastructure projects
• Familiarity with broker API or brokerage-as-a-service business models

What we offer

• Competitive salary and stock options
• Health benefits
• One-time USD $500 home-office setup allowance for new hires
• USD $150 monthly stipend via a Brex Card

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, and 24/5 trading. The company serves hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with institutional-grade APIs, serving over 10 million brokerage accounts globally. Backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Y Combinator, and others, Alpaca operates as a diverse, globally distributed team of 400+ members committed to opening financial services to everyone.