ROLE
Associate Advisor
This Associate Advisor role is with a $750 million family-office practice outside Philadelphia, on track to cross a billion, built for someone with strong relationship instincts who wants to lead the client service team, work closely with the advisors, and grow into a private wealth advisory seat with the firm behind them.
ROLE HIGHLIGHTS
SALARY
$140,000 - $190,000
LOCATION
Philadelphia metro area
TYPE
Full-time
Job description
Our client manages roughly $750 million for about 200 families and expects to be over a billion within the next year or so. The practice operates as a family office, with an in-house investment team led by a CIO.
This is a firm built on how much time it spends with clients. The partners will tell you they have spoiled the families they work with over the years with the attention and care they give them. Even at the most senior level, the majority of the work here is high-level client service. The partners are equally clear about ownership: they are not selling to private equity and are not being rolled up, and the intent is to stay independent on a platform with real capital behind it.
This role exists because there is a gap between the advisory team and the client service team, and right now the partners are filling it themselves. You would be the point person on both sides: leading a client service team of three, setting daily priorities, running meeting prep and follow-through, and carrying enough planning capability to sit in client meetings and do the work rather than coordinate it.
The work is designed to build the firm's next advisor. This means knowing how a client should be funding their donor-advised fund and what belongs in it. It also means exposure to private wealth work, real CFP work, learning how the firm manages money and how it works alongside families. Whether that's called advisory or client service is a semantic question. The substance is advisory.
What the partners need most is someone who is genuinely good with people. You would be managing the relationship between the advisory team and the client service team day to day, which means knowing what each advisor needs before a meeting, keeping three service professionals moving in the right direction, and being someone clients are glad to hear from. On top of that, you would be actively building yourself into an advisor, with the firm's support and the partners' guidance behind you. The compensation sits at the top of the national range for this title because that combination of strong relationship instincts plus real ambition to grow into the advisory seat is what makes this hire hard to find.
The pace is steady rather than surge-driven. Year-end brings donor-advised fund and required minimum distribution work, and tax season adds volume, but the firm does not run in exhausting cycles. Mondays are held for internal coordination.
What makes this role unique?
Client exposure arrives quickly, by necessity. A senior advisor moves off the roster at the end of the year, and the firm is simultaneously reducing how many advisors sit in each client meeting. Both changes create meetings that need covering. You will be in front of families early, not after a two-year apprenticeship.
A defined three-year trajectory the partners articulated themselves. The expectation is that you move toward a private wealth advisor role and develop your own replacement on the management side. That transition is what frees the partners to focus on their largest relationships, so the firm is motivated to make it happen rather than merely willing to allow it.
You inherit a mandate to change things. The partners named their own operational problems without being asked: too many advisors attending a single client meeting, meeting notes going unread, follow-through depending on who happens to pick it up. They want someone to restructure that, and they've been clear they'll back the changes.
The platform is about to change the work. The firm's broker-dealer has entered a strategic AI partnership, and one partner expects the next three years to reshape how everyone in the business operates — with client service professionals doing meaningfully more advisory work as the routine layer gets automated. Someone joining now is positioned at the front of that shift rather than absorbing it later.
The bonus isn't capped by a formula. Bonus is discretionary and reflects individual contribution and firm performance. For someone who consistently outperforms, the ceiling moves with what you deliver.
What you will do
Lead the client service team of three — set daily priorities, delegate, and hold the standard for accuracy and turnaround.
Serve as the connective tissue between the advisory team and the service team, so advisors are not managing service coordination themselves.
Own meeting preparation and post-meeting follow-through, including translating meeting notes into assigned, tracked next steps.
Build and present financial plans, and participate directly in client meetings with substantial families.
Do genuine planning work — charitable funding strategy, retirement income, and the higher-order questions that come with this asset level.
Take on client relationships over time, moving from supporting the advisory team to carrying your own.
Improve the workflows around onboarding, money movement, tax document delivery, and annual planning cycles.
Adjust your communication to the clien, as some want a two-line update and others want to understand how every decision was made.
Develop the client service team so the management piece of this role can eventually pass to someone you've trained.
The ideal candidate
Holds Series 7 and Series 66. This is a day-one requirement, not something to complete after start. CFP is preferred and the firm supports pursuing it.
Has real planning capability — has built plans, sat in client meetings, and can speak credibly to high-net-worth families about their situation.
Has led people, or has been the person others already come to. Formal management experience is not required. What matters is evidence in practice: training the new hire, owning the queue, building the workflow everyone now uses.
Takes personal responsibility for outcomes. The partners define work ethic specifically as making sure the job gets done, not making sure your part got done.
Reads people well. Adapting communication style to different clients is the trait the partners named first when asked what matters most.
Wants to work inside a team-based enterprise. All business flows through the firm, everyone is a W2 employee, and compensation rewards contribution to collective results rather than the growth of a personal book.
Is comfortable being in the office. The firm considered a remote structure and decided against it for this seat.