Director, Payments Risk

Accountabilities:

• • Develop and evolve the payments risk strategy, identifying the most significant risks, defining priorities, and translating the overall risk agenda into a practical roadmap.
  • Define risk coverage for new products and capabilities by identifying emerging risks, designing controls and monitoring mechanisms, and establishing appropriate success criteria before launch.
  • Maintain and evolve risk appetite and control frameworks, making informed decisions about when controls should be strengthened or adjusted based on data, risk exposure, and business needs.
  • Identify opportunities for risk management to support customer value and business growth while protecting customers and the organization from financial and operational downside.
  • Lead day-to-day risk operations, including team queues, escalation workflows, complex cases, operational routines, and decisions that fall outside established playbooks.
  • Monitor fraud and risk patterns, tune rules and controls, review cases when trends change, and use false positives and missed detections as signals for continuous improvement.
  • Establish and maintain incident-readiness frameworks, including playbooks, escalation paths, and decision processes for fraud spikes, emerging attack vectors, and payment-processing anomalies.
  • Partner with Product and Engineering to integrate risk requirements into product roadmaps and collaborate with Finance and Data teams to establish reliable dashboards, reporting, and risk intelligence.
  • Monitor portfolio-level losses and provide risk perspectives for forecasting, business cases, product launches, pricing decisions, and partner evaluations.
  • Act as a subject-matter resource across the organization, helping non-specialist teams understand payments risk and its impact on customer experience, sales, support, and operations.
  • Drive automation and AI-enabled tooling so the team can focus on exceptions and complex decisions rather than manual volume management.
  • Evaluate and implement new tools, processes, and technologies that improve the scalability and effectiveness of payments risk operations.
  • Lead, coach, and develop the Risk team, establishing clear expectations, strengthening capabilities, and fostering accountability, initiative, and continuous improvement.

  Requirements:

  • 8+ years of experience in payments and/or fintech, including at least 3 years leading teams and owning business outcomes.
  • Deep hands-on knowledge of the payments lifecycle, including onboarding, underwriting, processing, settlement, reconciliation, and disputes.
  • Strong experience with Stripe or comparable payments infrastructure, particularly within software platforms that carry payments-related liability.
  • Demonstrated experience building or operating fraud and risk programs, including detection systems, monitoring, controls, and risk-management frameworks.
  • Proven ability to balance loss prevention with customer experience, product growth, and broader commercial objectives.
  • Strong commercial understanding and the ability to translate risk decisions into practical guidance that enables responsible business growth.
  • Experience building risk reporting and dashboards that provide leadership with reliable information for informed decision-making.
  • An automation-first mindset, with experience establishing new processes, products, workflows, or tools and using AI and technology to improve operational scale.
  • High autonomy, sound judgment, and meticulous attention to detail, particularly when managing complex situations where overlooked risks can have significant financial consequences.
  • Strong systems-thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to create structure and make decisive decisions in ambiguous or rapidly changing environments.
  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex payments and risk concepts into clear guidance for non-specialist stakeholders.
  • Strong people leadership, coaching, collaboration, and stakeholder-management capabilities.

  Benefits:

  • Annual base salary of CAD $170,000–$200,000 for Canada-based candidates, depending on location, experience, and skillset.
  • Equity opportunities.
  • Remote work arrangement.
  • Opportunity to lead a high-impact payments risk function within a rapidly scaling fintech environment.
  • Significant autonomy and ownership over risk strategy, operations, systems, and team development.
  • Opportunity to work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Finance, Data, and other business teams.
  • Exposure to advanced automation, AI-enabled tooling, fraud prevention, and payments infrastructure.
  • Equal opportunity workplace with accommodations available during the recruitment process.
  • A recruitment process designed to be transparent, respectful of candidates’ time, and supported by human decision-making.