# Head of Risk at Modern Treasury

- Company: Modern Treasury
- What the company does: Backed by Y Combinator.
- Company website: http://www.moderntreasury.com/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Principal and up
- Location: San Francisco
- Work setup: Remote
- Pay: $200K to $285K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-08-21
- Apply by: 2026-10-08
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/moderntreasury/6aea2452-d858-434b-acc9-e9785c21cb69
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/modern-treasury-head-of-risk/

## 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

Tags: Legal