Backed by Y Combinator.
About the role
Modern Treasury is hiring a Head of Risk to build our risk function from the ground up. Money moves through Modern Treasury for some of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the economy. How well we manage the risk in that movement directly shapes the product — who we can onboard, how fast they can transact, and how much friction they feel along the way.
What they're looking for
- You've built this before : You've stood up a risk function at an early-stage or high-growth company rather than inherited a mature one. You know what the first version looks like, what to defer, and what will hurt in eighteen months if you skip it now
- Payments risk, specifically : Not lending or credit. You understand ACH returns, settlement timing, unauthorized debit exposure, and counterparty risk. You know the difference between risk and compliance, and where they have to work as one
- A systems thinker, not a queue operator : You think about decisioning at scale and design for an order of magnitude more volume. You'll set thresholds and review edge cases by hand when needed, but you're building toward something that doesn't require it
- Technical and data fluency : You can go deep with engineers and hold your own. You're comfortable in the data yourself — SQL, ideally Python — and fluent in applying modern AI tools to operational problems
- Scar tissue, earned well : You've seen things go wrong — a fraud ring, a loss event, a control that failed in a way nobody anticipated — and carry the pattern recognition that comes with it. You were in the room, not the cause
- Judgment you can defend : You'll make consequential calls with incomplete information and get some wrong. You reason clearly about tradeoffs, write your thinking down, and can explain why a decision was right even when the outcome wasn't
More about this role
Modern Treasury is hiring a Head of Risk to build our risk function from the ground up. Money moves through Modern Treasury for some of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the economy. How well we manage the risk in that movement directly shapes the product — who we can onboard, how fast they can transact, and how much friction they feel along the way.
This is a foundational, hands-on role. You will decide how customers are underwritten, how limits and reserves are set, how transactions are authorized, and how we detect fraud — and you will build those systems early, before scale forces the decisions for you.
This role reports to our General Counsel, who leads Legal, Compliance, and Risk.
Modern Treasury provides trusted infrastructure for money movement. The company helps teams launch and scale payment experiences in days, not months. With best-in-class developer tools and a single API for fiat and stablecoins, plus built-in compliance, ledgering, and reporting, Modern Treasury enables businesses to move money instantly, reliably, and at scale.
You will start as an individual contributor with the mandate to build. You will own:
Onboarding & underwriting : How we evaluate...
Browse similar: Startup jobs · Remote jobs · San Francisco Bay Area