Head of Equity Administration

About Us: Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI. About the Role We are seeking a highly experienced Head of Equity Administration to own and scale our global equity administration function as we prepare for the next stage of growth and potential public-company readiness. This leader will be responsible for the end-to-end administration, governance, controls, reporting, and employee experience associated with our equity programs. The role will partner closely with Legal, Finance, Accounting, Tax, People, Payroll, Compensation, and senior leadership, and will play a critical role in building the infrastructure, processes, and controls required for a complex late-stage private company and future public company. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise in equity compensation with strong operational judgment, systems experience, attention to detail, and the ability to lead through significant organizational change. Key Responsibilities Equity Plan Administration Own the day-to-day and strategic administration of the company’s equity compensation programs, including stock options, RSUs, restricted stock, and other equity-based awards. Manage the complete equity lifecycle, including grants, vesting, exercises, releases, cancellations, terminations, repurchases, transfers, and settlement. Maintain accurate equity records, capitalization data, participant information, and supporting documentation. Oversee equity administration platforms, workflows, integrations, and vendor relationships. Establish scalable policies, procedures, controls, and service-level standards for equity administration. IPO and Public Company Readiness Serve as a key functional leader in IPO-readiness efforts related to equity compensation and capitalization. Assess current processes and implement the systems, controls, governance, and documentation required to operate effectively as a public company. Partner with Legal, Finance, Accounting, Payroll, Tax, Compensation, Internal Audit, external counsel, auditors, and other advisors on IPO preparation and ongoing compliance. Support preparation for public-company equity administration requirements, including Section 16 processes, insider-related workflows, trading-window administration, Rule 10b5-1 plans, and related controls, as applicable. Develop processes to support future employee stock purchase plans and other public-company equity programs, where relevant. Compliance, Accounting, Tax, and Controls Ensure equity administration processes comply with applicable securities, tax, accounting, and corporate governance requirements. Partner with Accounting on stock-based compensation reporting, reconciliations, audit support, and financial close processes. Partner with Tax and Payroll on equity-related tax withholding, reporting, settlement, mobility, and international compliance. Support compliance with applicable requirements including ASC 718, Section 409A, securities regulations, and relevant international equity rules. Design and maintain strong internal controls, including controls supporting future SOX compliance. Lead regular reconciliations among the equity administration platform, general ledger, payroll systems, HR systems, and capitalization records. Global Equity Operations Oversee equity administration across multiple jurisdictions and ensure local operational requirements are appropriately supported. Partner with Legal, Tax, and