VP - Risk & Banking Operations

Arthur C. Clarke famously developed the maxim that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

At Mercury, we aim to deliver a magical experience to our customers who rely on us for their banking* and financial workflows. But as with any form of magic, behind that magic lies an incredible amount of hard work, dedication, training, and expertise.

Our dedicated risk and banking operations teams are an integral part of delivering the magical experience - they are the wizards behind the curtain. We simply cannot deliver an incredible product and customer experience without getting risk and compliance right. We consider risk and compliance holistically, building a strong understanding of what every customer is doing and thinking through the end-to-end customer experience. Our team of risk and compliance professionals is robust and talented.

As the VP - Risk & Banking Operations you will bring strategic and cohesive leadership across Mercury’s Risk & Banking Operations teams: Onboarding, KYC/KYB, EDD/ODD, Fraud & Disputes, Treasury Operations, Payments Operations, and Lifecycle Operations. You will lead a growing organization of 120+ people, and a direct team of experienced leaders across these functions, partner with peer executives across the company to build a resilient and scalable operational function, and help us navigate risk with precision and care.

*Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC.

Here are some specific areas you’ll be expected to think about on the job: 

• Build and manage a Risk & Banking Operations organization that is known for setting standards within the banking and fintech industries, and is strong enough to differentiate Mercury in the long term solely on its own merits. 
• Hire, develop, lead, and create structure for talented operations teams, while building a culture of collaboration and strong risk thinking across the entire company.
• Enable new customers, markets, or product features by balancing short- and long-term company goals, prioritizing what the most important risks are, and staying ahead of industry trends and emerging risk areas.
• Work closely with our Legal and Compliance teams to uphold Mercury’s risk and compliance standards, and proactively build the operational systems to scale its impact
• Partner across our Product, Engineering, Design, and Data teams to amplify user experience through thoughtful, transparent product thinking, and enabling scalable operational automation across teams
• Driving sound, strategic decision-making with data and metrics, working closely with our Finance team to make decisions about organizational growth, headcount & capacity planning, and costs
• Take ownership of how Mercury thinks through, minimizes, and responds to fraud and financial loss
• Help expand Mercury’s BPO efforts, including partnering with internal teams to manage current partners, and help develop the strategy to identify, onboard, train, and provide ongoing oversight of new partners
• Building systems for efficient operations across a variety of risk-related product features (e.g. Onboarding, Disputes, Treasury, and Payments to name a few.)
• Finding and working closely with the strongest tooling and partners to enable a great Risk & Banking operations organization, and forming strong relationships with partner financial institutions and their executive counterparts

There are lots of paths that could lead you to be successful in a role like this; we think the strongest candidates will have this experience:

• 10+ years of experience working in an operational risk and/or banking management function, ideally in a financial technology company, large banking institution, or the payments industry. 15+ years of experience overall.
• 7+ years of experience in a people leadership role, directly managing senior-level leaders who themselves manage operational functions across various risk domains.
• Be a strong analytical thinker and have the ability to leverage data to develop team and organizational metrics, such as KPIs, SLAs, approval rates, fraud loss tracking, capacity planning, and other related team performance and risk indicators.
• Experience building resilience and scalability of risk & banking operations using robust procedures, process automation, and effectively working with Product, Engineering, and Data teams to build capabilities and tools.
• Bring an expert understanding of industry risk trends, and a deep respect for compliance and financial regulations, to work effectively across Mercury’s Compliance, Legal, and Audit teams, and banking and financial institutions partners.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to motivate and guide teams through complex situations, secure buy-in across levels and teams to deliver on risk operations initiatives at scale.
• Ability to make decisions quickly and pivot, and demonstrate comfort in a fast-paced and rapidly changing business and regulatory environment.

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity, and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees (any location): $280,600 - $350,800

Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

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