Director, Margin Product Owner

What is the opportunity?

The Margin Product Owner is responsible for defining, prioritizing, and guiding the development of margin management products and capabilities to maximize value and alignment with business objectives. This role sits within the Funding, Liquidity & Payment Services portfolio and reports to Product Lead, Funding, Liquidity & Payment Services. The Margin Product Owner translates business strategy into clear roadmaps, manages product backlogs, and ensures delivery of innovative margin solutions that enable the firm's collateral management to function globally while maintaining operational integrity, control, and scalability.

What will you do?

Vision and Strategy

• The Margin Product Owner articulates the vision for collateral and margin management capabilities spanning initial margin, variation margin, margin calls, collateral movements, segregation models, and settlement processes.
• Work closely with stakeholders, customers, and leadership to understand market needs, competitive positioning, and strategic priorities.
• Translate business goals into a clear roadmap for margin functionalities and communicate this vision consistently to development teams.

Requirements, Backlog Management and Product Design

• Maintains the margin product backlog-an ordered list of features, improvements, and fixes.
• Write user stories and acceptance criteria, ensuring requirements are clear and testable. Continuously refine and reprioritize the backlog based on business value, customer feedback, technical dependencies, and operational constraints. This requires balancing short-term needs against long-term vision while considering regulatory and compliance obligations.
• Analyze metrics, user feedback, and usage data to inform prioritization and make evidence-based decisions. Track key performance indicators including margin disputes, settlement fails, aged exposures, manual processing touchpoints, and collateral velocity. Validate hypotheses through releases and champion a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement around collateral efficiency and data quality.
• Coordinate with compliance, sales, operations, and support teams on feature launches and product rollouts. Determine release timing, provide training and support to teams in Operations, Client Services, Sales, and other functional areas, and ensure the organization is ready to support new functionality.
• Oversee onboarding of new products, counterparties, and clearing models without compromising controls

Technology Enablement and Data Architecture

• The Product Owner acts as the business owner for margin platform initiatives, data architecture improvements, and technology migrations. They partner with Technology to drive automation of margin calculations, calls, and settlements; reduce manual touchpoints and spreadsheet dependencies; and improve data quality, lineage, and real-time visibility. Own the operational requirements for collateral platforms and ensure data reliability for stress testing and liquidity reporting.

Governance, Controls & Stakeholder Management

• The Product Owner collaborates with Risk, Compliance, and Audit teams to design and maintain a robust control framework covering margin accuracy, timeliness, eligibility, concentration, haircut controls, settlement fails, and aging exposure.
• Ensures product development aligns with global margin and collateral regulations, including uncleared margin rules, clearing house margin models, segregation requirements, and client asset protection regimes. Translate regulatory change into executable product requirements and roadmap updates. Support regulatory exams, issue responses, and remediation programs related to margin operations. Balance standardization across regions with respect for local regulatory requirements.
• Act as the first line owner for collateral-related product risks and operational considerations. Ensure product design incorporates safeguards against margin calculation errors, settlement failures, and regulatory breach.
• Support dispute resolution frameworks and service standards while ensuring products are scalable without compromising control discipline.
• Serves as the bridge between development teams and business stakeholders across engineering, operations, risk, compliance, legal, liquidity, treasury, and front office teams.
• Gather requirements from counterparties, clients, regulators, and internal teams while managing competing interests. Advocate for decisions that serve the product, risk management, and business best and communicate progress, roadmap changes, and product decisions to stakeholders transparently. Ensure collateral operations support firm liquidity objectives and enable predictable, transparent, and controlled margin experiences for clients and counterparties.
• Negotiation and conflict resolution skills to manage competing priorities and build consensus among diverse stakeholders. Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams without direct authority. Must be a team player who works well with technical and non-technical resources across operations, risk, compliance, legal, liquidity, treasury, and front office. Ability to command credibility across Front Office, Risk, and regulators.

What you need to succeed?

• Bachelor's degree in business, technology, or equivalent experience required. CTP (Certified Treasury Professional) certification preferred but not required. Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) certification a plus. Project Management Professional (PMP) certification a plus.
• 15+ years of working experience in the financial industry, preferably in Margins or Collateral management. 15+ years of in-depth knowledge in margin and collateral operations including initial margin and variation margin processing, margin calls and disputes, collateral movements and substitutions, and segregation and third-party custody models. 7+ years of hands-on agile development in a product owner role, including creating user stories and backlog refinement. 5-10 years of experience in product, platform, or transformation leadership. Prior experience working in a large, geographically dispersed, matrixed organization.
• Understanding of software development processes, timelines, and technical constraints well enough to make informed trade-offs. Knowledge of Agile and Scrum methodologies, including how sprints, user stories, and backlogs function. Familiarity with product management frameworks like OKRs, user journey mapping, and competitive analysis. In-depth knowledge of margin and collateral operations including initial margin and variation margin processing, margin calls and disputes, collateral movements and substitutions, and segregation and third-party custody models. Expertise in global margin and collateral regulations, including uncleared margin rules, clearing house margin models, and client asset protection regimes. Ability to produce business process maps and operational workflows.
• Strong organizational skills and ability to see tasks through to completion without significant guidance. Ability to work with JIRA in agile squad structure. A startup mindset-comfortable with quick pace, quick change, and ambiguities.
• Strong communication and presentation skills are essential. The ability to explain complex margin, collateral, and regulatory concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. Excellent analytical abilities to interpret operational data, identify trends, and make evidence-based decisions. Strategic thinking to connect daily tasks to long-term business objectives while anticipating regulatory and liquidity impacts before they materialize
• Preferred: Project Management Professional (PMP) Certified or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).

What's in it for you?

We thrive on the challenge to be our best, progressive thinking to keep growing, and working together to deliver trusted advice to help our clients thrive and communities prosper. We care about each other, reaching our potential, making a difference to our communities, and achieving success that is mutual.

• A comprehensive Total Rewards Program include competitive compensation and flexible benefits, such as 401(k) program with company-matching contributions, health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance, and paid-time off.

• Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities.

• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact.

• Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team.

• Opportunities to do challenging work.

• Opportunities to build close relationships with clients.

The expected salary range for this position is $160,000 - $225,000 USD, depending on your experience, skills, and registration status, market conditions and business needs. You have the potential to earn more through RBC's discretionary variable compensation program which gives you an opportunity to increase your total compensation, provided the business meets its performance targets and you meet your individual goals.

RBC's compensation philosophy and principles recognize the importance of a highly qualified global workforce and plays a critical role in attracting, engaging and retaining talent that:

• Drives RBC's high performance culture

• Enables collective achievement of our strategic goals

• Generates sustainable shareholder returns and above market shareholder value

Job Skills

Additional Job Details

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Our Employment Opportunities

At RBC, we are guided by living shared values of Client First, Integrity, Collaboration, Respect and Excellence and winning together as One RBC. We believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.

RBC is presently inviting candidates to apply for this existing vacancy. Applying to this posting allows you to express your interest in this current career opportunity at RBC. Qualified applicants may be contacted to review their resume in more detail.