Location: Oakland, CA (Hybrid: in-office Tuesdays & Thursdays) 

Position: Full-time, reporting to the Operating Partner

About ICA Fund—Not Business as Usual 

ICA accelerates great businesses through mentorship and mission-aligned investments to catalyze value in missed markets to transform communities. With a deep commitment to identifying, supporting and helping to grow small businesses run by underrepresented entrepreneurs, ICA is innovating ways to leverage coaching, capital and connections to amplify our impact. 

By offering targeted acceleration workshops and operating tools, alongside hands-on advising from a network of highly experienced business operators, ICA is democratizing access to resources that catalyze value and growth in small businesses. 

The Role 

The Investment Principal is a senior investor who helps shape and execute the organization's investment practice at a pivotal moment — building disciplined, creative structuring while strengthening relationships with founders, funders, co-investors, and internal teams. Reporting directly to the Operating Partner, this person will help set our investment approach, manage the deal pipeline, and lead deal execution. 

This is not a role for someone who wants a well-worn playbook. It calls for someone thoughtful and process-oriented who stays steady when a deal or a company gets messy. The Investment Principal should be comfortable operating in an environment with ambiguity — designing new structures, testing unproven approaches, and making high-stakes calls without a clear precedent to follow. They will bring deep networks, a proven track record of sourcing and closing high-quality deals, and the emotional intelligence to rebuild and steward relationships across the organization's ecosystem. They will present deals to the Investment Committee, prepare reporting to the Board and funders, and serve as a credible face of the organization's investment activities, internally and externally. 

Success in this role means delivering strong outcomes for founders and communities, solid returns for the fund, and a sense of confidence — internally and externally — in the organization's judgment and leadership. Direct reports include two Investment Associates. 

Core Responsibilities

Strategic & Innovative Investment Leadership 

→ Develop and execute a forward-looking investment strategy that balances financial returns, social impact, and mission — with disciplined creativity in structuring, grounded in sound underwriting and judgement. 

→ Establish and continuously refine investment policies, frameworks, and processes, treating the practice as a living system to be improved rather than a fixed playbook.

→ Build the organization’s AI and data tools into the investment process, using them to raise speed and accuracy in diligence, modeling, and reporting, and to sharpen judgement rather than substitute for it. 

→ Identify gaps in the market along the continuum of debt and equity where the organization can play a catalytic, first-mover role. 

→ Design and pilot innovative financial products and hybrid structures that address unmet needs in overlooked markets, exercising sound judgment about which risks are worth taking. 

→ Prepare and deliver clear, candid reporting on pipeline activity, closed investments, and portfolio performance for funders, the Board, and other stakeholders. 

Navigating Ambiguity & Risk 

→ Make sound decisions in fast-moving, imperfect-information environments, comfortable operating without a fully mapped path forward. 

→ Exercise thoughtful, informed risk tolerance — distinguishing between risks that advance the mission and those that threaten it — and communicate that reasoning clearly to the internal team, Investment Committee and Board. 

→ Anticipate second- and third-order consequences of deal structures and strategic choices, particularly where reputational stakes are high. 

→ Bring thoughtful, process-oriented, and steady judgement to ambiguous, high-pressure situations without getting flustered, modeling resilience for the team. 

Relationship Building & Reputational Trust 

→ Serve as a trusted, credible representative of the organization with founders, co-investors, funders, and the Board — actively working to rebuild and strengthen relationships. 

→ Build authentic, durable relationships with founders grounded in transparency, follow-through, and genuine understanding of their businesses. 

→ Cultivate co-investment relationships with VCs, CDFIs, family offices, and other capital partners, treating each interaction as an opportunity to reinforce the organization's credibility. 

→ Represent the organization at industry events and forums, positioning it as a thoughtful, trustworthy, and innovative leader in impact investing. 

→ Partner closely with internal teams and leadership to align messaging, close gaps in communication, and ensure consistency between what the organization says and what it does.

Deal Sourcing, Structuring & Execution 

→ Drive high-quality deal flow by leveraging personal networks, partnerships, and ecosystem relationships. 

→ Collaborate with the Portfolio Team to ensure a strong, mission-aligned investment strategy. 

→ Develop and maintain a high quality pipeline that represents ICA’s mission and demand in the market for ICA’s flexible product offerings. 

→ Lead end-to-end investment processes: sourcing, diligence, structuring, negotiation, and closing. 

→ Design and execute creative capital structures across debt, equity, and hybrid instruments. 

→ Oversee financial modeling, investment memoranda, and scenario analysis, ensuring rigor without sacrificing speed or creativity. 

→ Bring investment opportunities and portfolio strategy to the team and Investment Committee with clear, data-informed, and persuasive recommendations. 

Founder Engagement & Value Creation 

→ Build trust-based relationships with founders, developing a deep understanding of their businesses, motivations, and challenges. 

→ Ask sharp, empathetic questions that surface real insight into business models, leadership dynamics, and growth strategy. 

→ Advise founders on capital strategy and connect them to the organization's networks and partners, acting as a genuine value-added partner. 

Team Leadership & Development 

→ Serve as a member of the extended leadership team, modeling high emotional intelligence, integrity, and accountability. 

→ Lead and mentor the two Investment Associates, creating a rewarding work environment alongside high performance standards. 

→ Work collaboratively with team members to set clear OKR’s, accountability structures, and development plans. 

→ Set the expectation that the team works with AI tools, give the strongest users room to push the workflows forward, and hold every output to the verification and accuracy that investment work requires. Establish AI as a standard part of the team's workflow, empower the strongest users to drive workflow optimization and ensure every output meets our high standards of verification and accuracy required for investment work. 

→ Foster a collaborative, rigorous, and impact-focused culture within the investment function — one that can absorb setbacks and learn from them. 

Impact & Success Metrics 

→ Close well-structured, mission-aligned investments with a consistent standard at entry.

→ Close investments with structures matched to company needs across debt, hybrid, and equity instruments.

→ Ensure new investments clear the underwriting and coverage standard before reaching the Investment Committee. 

→ Maintain a qualified pipeline screened against the investment thesis. 

→ Strengthen portfolio performance and credit health. 

→ Bring companies into the portfolio that will show gains in revenue, profitability, and capital raised. 

→ Meet the fund's impact targets, with quality job creation and founder and community outcomes measured and reported alongside financial performance.

→ Underwrite new and follow-on investments to standards that keep portfolio credit quality within target. 

→ Execute follow-on financings surfaced with the Portfolio Operations team, on schedule and with documented rationale. 

→ Run a rigorous process and develop the team. 

→ Deliver accurate, on-time Investment Committee memos, Board and funder materials that require minimal rework. 

→ Mentor the Investment Associates, in partnership with the Operating Partner, as they build toward carrying deals end-to-end with growing sourcing and structuring independence. 

→ Adopt and improve AI-assisted workflows so production work takes less of the team's time over the year consistent standard at entry. 

Qualifications 

Essential 

→ Deep personal commitment to the organization's mission of supporting overlooked and underestimated founders. 

→ 10+ years of experience with real depth in debt and credit, spanning private credit, CDFI lending, venture and growth equity. 

→ Strong track record sourcing and closing investments, with active networks in early- and growth-stage ecosystems. 

→ Demonstrated comfort operating in ambiguous, evolving environments and making sound decisions with incomplete information. 

→ Demonstrated ability to structure and negotiate creative deals across equity, debt, and hybrid instruments. 

→ Advanced financial modeling and analysis skills, with the ability to guide and review junior staff work. 

→ Fluency with AI tools in investment work and clear judgement about where they improve decisions and where they do not. AI fluency in investment work, paired with judgment to discern where it enhances decision-making and where human expertise takes precedence. 

→ Exceptional presentation and communication skills, including experience pitching to an Investment Committee or Board.

→ Proven leadership and team management experience, with a track record of building trust and psychological safety on a team. 

→ Exceptionally high emotional intelligence — able to read stakeholders accurately, navigate sensitive dynamics, and build relationships with authenticity and care.

→ Healthy, well-calibrated risk tolerance — willing to advocate for creative structures remaining rigorous, disciplined and accountable. 

Preferred 

→ Experience with impact measurement frameworks. 

→ Exposure to community development finance and catalytic capital approaches.

→ Thought leadership in innovative investment approaches. 

→ Prior experience in an organization going through significant change. 

Compensation & Benefits 

Salary: The annual base salary range for this full time position is $175,000-$190,000, dependent upon background and experience. Compensation also includes a discretionary bonus paid annually based on organization and individual performance. 

Benefits: ICA’s full benefits package includes: 13 paid holidays per year; 3 weeks of annual paid vacation; 10 days of annual paid sick leave; at least 3 employer-identified mental health days; employer-paid health, dental, vision, life insurance and disability benefits; 50% employer-paid dependent health, dental, vision; employer-paid mental health counseling; 24-hour online virtual healthcare; 401(k) plan with matching; and mobile phone / Internet reimbursement. 

→Equal Opportunity Employer: ICA Fund evaluates qualified candidates without regard to protected characteristics and is fully committed to fostering equity and inclusion. 

Hiring Process & How to Apply 

People are key to our success, and we’d like to get to know you. Depending on your progress through our hiring process, you may go through the following steps: A round or two of interviews; review of work samples; completion of an exercise or case study; and reference-checking of previous supervisors and colleagues. 

Please skip the "Apply" button below — our system is undergoing a little update, and clicking it won't submit your materials. Please submit a resume and a brief cover letter (combined into one PDF or Word document) to: icajobs@ica.fund.