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About the Role
Forward is a rapidly growing embedded finance company seeking a Senior Manager, Risk & Compliance Operations to manage operational cadence and governance frameworks for onboarding, transaction monitoring, and merchant maintenance. You will ensure smooth operations and scale human judgment through robust governance.
Responsibilities
- Run the weekly ops rhythm across Onboarding, Transaction Monitoring, and Merchant Maintenance pods, including cadence, SLAs, escalation triage, and cross-pod handoffs.
- Design and own the control framework, including Risk Appetite Statement, Delegation of Authority, Control Inventory, and L2 Governance.
- Build policy as a living operational tool, covering Risk Assessment, Underwriting, Sanctions, and Merchant Termination.
- Establish partner and merchant risk assessment processes.
- Partner with pod leads on risk judgment and policy interpretation, serving as the operational anchor for escalations.
- Own the RCO weekly rhythm: scheduled standups, escalation triage, decision log, and surfacing blockers to Leadership.
- Set and track pod-level SLAs (e.g., time to first touch, case resolution cycles, dispute response time, payout cycles) and escalate root causes when SLAs are missed.
- Lead escalation triage for cases outside standard pod workflows (e.g., fraud incidents, high-risk merchants, regulatory escalations).
- Coordinate cross-pod handoffs to ensure seamless merchant lifecycle management.
- Build and maintain case routing logic that adapts to business scaling.
- Own the Risk Appetite Statement, defining and operationalizing risk thresholds as pod SLAs.
- Build the Delegation of Authority (DOA) Matrix for merchant boarding and settlement decisions.
- Complete and maintain the Control Inventory, documenting controls, mapping risks, and establishing testing cadences.
- Lead the L2 Governance Framework deployment, owning policy, threshold tuning, and integration with the decisioning engine.
- Establish standing audit management processes for continuous audit evidence and control testing.
- Own core operational policies as living documents, including Risk Assessment, Underwriting, Sanctions/KYC/KYB, Merchant Termination, and Incident Response.
- Ensure policies are enforced, identify gaps, own remediation, and align pod leads on interpretation.
- Build policy as a scaling lever for merchant risk tiering, monitoring, and handling.
- Stand up a repeatable partner risk assessment process with a standardized framework, checklist, and escalation path.
- Own merchant risk classification, maintaining scoring methodology, tier definitions, and EDD triggers.
- Lead high-risk merchant oversight and represent Risk's position in business discussions.
- Establish fraud governance, defining loss rate thresholds and incident response procedures.
- Partner on transaction monitoring tuning with Data Scientists and the TM pod.
- Manage fraud incidents, leading investigation, containment, remediation, and ensuring regulatory notifications.
- Serve as the operational anchor for pod leads, assisting with judgment calls, process questions, and policy interpretation.
- Align on risk judgment with pod leads for complex merchant decisions.
- Drive cross-pod consistency in risk philosophies through policy, cadence, and escalation discipline.
Requirements
- 5+ years in risk operations, fraud operations, or compliance operations at a fintech, payments, or banking organization.
- Direct experience building operational discipline (SLAs, escalation matrices, control frameworks) from an immature state.
- Deep knowledge of payments and risk: KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, AML/BSA, chargeback and dispute processes, merchant risk tiering, network program rules.
- Documented experience building or operating a risk appetite statement, control inventory, DOA matrix, or L2 governance framework.
- Comfortable leading through process, policy, and cadence rather than hands-on execution.
- Able to mentor others on judgment calls without doing the work yourself.
- Data-literate: comfortable reading risk dashboards, SLA reports, loss reports, and SQL queries; able to spot anomalies.
- Clear written and oral communication for internal and external audiences.
- Build systems that work consistently: SLAs are not aspirational, escalation paths are predictable, and policy is enforced.
- Experience at a scale payments provider.
- Prior fraud or incident command experience: led or co-led investigation and remediation of fraud outbreaks or significant operational incidents.
- Experience building or scaling operational systems: moved from ad hoc to repeatable process, and built playbooks.
- Financial crime background: fraud, money laundering, account takeover, and designing controls.
- Banking or embedded finance exposure: deposit account operations or consumer protection rules.
Skills
- Risk Operations
- Fraud Operations
- Compliance Operations
- Operational Cadence Management
- Governance Frameworks
- SLA Management
- Escalation Triage
- Control Framework Design
- Risk Appetite Statement
- Delegation of Authority (DOA)
- Control Inventory Management
- L2 Governance
- Policy Development
- Risk Assessment
- Underwriting
- Sanctions Screening
- Merchant Maintenance
- Partner Risk Assessment
- Merchant Risk Classification
- Fraud Incident Response
- Transaction Monitoring
- KYC/KYB
- AML/BSA
- Chargeback Management
- Dispute Resolution
- Data Analysis
- SQL
- Communication (Written and Oral)
- Operational Rigor
- Incident Command
- Process Improvement
- Financial Crime Prevention
- Banking Operations
- Embedded Finance
Location
- Austin, TX
Work Type
- Full-time
Experience Level
- Senior Manager
- 5+ years
Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity package
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits
- Flexible work arrangements
- Generous PTO
- Learning & development budget for conferences, courses, and certifications
About the Company
- Forward is one of the fastest growing embedded finance companies in the US, launching exciting new products that accelerate how businesses operate.