Recently I had to change the permissions for files that were uploaded for the local user via FTP. I wanted them to be 755.
Initially I thought it would be as simple as changing the vsftpd.conf file to set the local_umask=0755 but this change alone did nothing. After a lot of googling and reading I came across this optimal solution, which I present here to hopefully save others some time.
local_umask=002
chmod_enable=YES
file_open_mode=0755