Associate Director — Private Client & Family Advisory

Associate Director — Private Client & Family Advisory (UHNW)

London · Full-time · Retained and confidential

Luxury Executive is retained on this search. Our client is not accepting direct applications.

The firm

Our client is an advisory institution built for families at the very highest tier of wealth. Founder-backed, London-based, and deliberately small.

Families like this already have the best specialists in every domain — lawyers, bankers, doctors, educators. What they rarely have is one trusted relationship that holds the whole picture. That is what the firm exists to be: helping families think through the decisions that shape them, from education and health to relocation, governance and succession, and then seeing those decisions through.

It is a consulting firm, not a concierge service. Weekends are weekends and evenings are evenings. If you have looked at private office and family office roles and been put off by what they ask of your life, this is a different proposition.

The role

Working closely with a senior Partner, you turn priorities into action and make sure delivery is exceptional.

You shape how a complex situation should be approached, judge what matters most, coordinate the specialists and colleagues involved, and hold every strand of an engagement to standard. You will be meaningfully present in client situations — a calm, credible presence — while the Partner retains ownership of the relationship.

You will often hold several sensitive workstreams at once, sometimes across more than one family. Priorities change, information is incomplete, and the route forward is frequently not obvious. The role needs someone who brings order without bureaucracy, makes a clear recommendation rather than waiting to be told, and stays composed when things are personal, ambiguous or moving fast.

What you'll do

• Lead complex, multi-party engagements from first priority through to outcome
• Weigh what matters most across a Partner's portfolio and come with a clear view on priorities, risks and next actions
• Shape the approach where there is no established playbook
• Coordinate advisers, specialists, providers, timelines and dependencies so the whole moves as one
• Prepare concise briefs and decision material for senior stakeholders
• Anticipate difficulty before it becomes visible to the client
• Build trusted relationships with external specialists while keeping independent judgement
• Hold continuity across relationships, commitments and live workstreams, so the institution rather than any individual is the constant
• Guide the colleagues supporting your engagements
• Improve how the work gets done, including through AI and better tooling

Backgrounds we'd like to hear from

We are open on background and closed on wiring. People who thrive here have spent their careers in service of someone else's outcome and found it genuinely rewarding — not as a stepping stone.

• Private secretary, senior policy adviser, head of briefing, special adviser, diplomat or senior public servant — particularly if you have already made one move into the commercial world
• Chief of staff, private office director, or senior adviser to a principal, family or founder
• Private client lawyer, private banker, wealth adviser or family governance professional ready for a broader remit than one slice of the picture
• Manager or principal in a behavioural, human-centred or boutique advisory firm
• Senior operator in philanthropy, family enterprise, membership or another trusted-adviser environment
• A non-linear career that has deliberately turned from a technical or commercial discipline towards people, service and complex client work

What we're looking for

• Evidence of running several complex workstreams at once and holding standards when plans changed
• Independent judgement, and the confidence to bring a recommendation rather than wait to be told
• Credibility and composure around principals, founders, senior officials or comparable stakeholders
• Excellent writing — the ability to turn complexity into short, usable decision material
• The ability to manage specialists and colleagues with competing perspectives and incentives
• A real service orientation, intellectual humility, and quiet pride in work done well
• Instinctive discretion
• Comfort in an early-stage firm where some of the structure is still being built
• Independence of judgement — you understand people deeply without being influenced by status, wealth or lifestyle

An undergraduate degree from a strong, globally recognised institution. Postgraduate study welcome, not required.

What this role is not

• A concierge, lifestyle management, household management or executive assistant role
• A private banking, investment sales or business development position
• A strategy consulting role that ends at the recommendation
• A task-led project management job where the priorities and processes are already defined
• A role for someone principally motivated by status, access, personal visibility or commercial ownership

Success and progression

Success here is felt as confidence. Clients, specialists and colleagues trust that whatever you are holding will be handled, that nothing important is missed, and that the standard holds however demanding the work.

Progression is based on demonstrated capability rather than time served. The question the firm asks is whether it would trust you to own the relationship if the Partner were no longer involved. When the answer is a confident yes, the path to Partner is open.

Practicalities

London, in person. You must have the existing right to work in the UK. Competitive base plus bonus, benchmarked at the upper end for the level, with the package built around the person.

To apply

Apply via LinkedIn or email with your CV and a short note — no more than half a page — describing one situation where you acted on incomplete information, coordinated several senior or specialist stakeholders, and made a recommendation in someone else's best interests.

All approaches are handled in strict confidence. The client's identity is shared at the first conversation.