Risk Operations Lead

S27a; Canada; On-site; CAD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Salsa builds embedded payroll solutions and risk controls to scale payments in Canada and beyond. We are hiring a Risk Operations Lead to manage Risk Analysts, strengthen controls, and improve processes while growing responsibly in a complex payroll environment.

You will guide incident response, develop repeatable decision trees, and partner with Product, Engineering, and Operations to implement scalable risk tools and dashboards.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in risk, fraud, trust and safety, payments, payroll risk, or similar operational teams.
• Experience managing and developing analysts or operators in queue-based, case-management, or manual-review environments.
• Proven ability to build SOPs, workflows, and escalation structures from scratch
• Strong background in fintech, payroll, embedded finance, or payments.
• Strong understanding of fraud risk and operational risk in payroll or payments, including ACH timing, reversals, funds flow, faster payroll implications, and credit exposure.
• Ability to balance risk mitigation with customer friction and clearly communicate those tradeoffs.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, especially with Product, Engineering, and Operations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across frontline teams and leadership.
• Comfort building dashboards, reports, and operational metrics to guide decisions.
• Experience evaluating risk engine or rule performance
• Experience navigating incidents and operating effectively in ambiguity

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Risk Analysts responsible for day-to-day risk operations
• Serve as the escalation point for the risk analyst team — make and document the judgment calls on ambiguous cases, and turn those decisions into repeatable decision trees
• Build and improve SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, and review processes across manual review and case management
• Improve team performance, operational rigor, and overall risk outcomes
• Work cross‑functionally with Product, Engineering, and Operations to implement controls, improve tooling, and scale risk operations
• Monitor trends and key metrics such as fraud rate, loss rate, and approval rate to identify issues and opportunities
• Help refine controls and policies related to fraud, payroll risk, ACH exposure, reversals, faster payroll, and credit exposure
• Be a steady operator during high‑severity incidents — fraud attacks, payment disruptions.
• Own fraud and operational‑risk expertise for the team day to day.

Skills

Risk management

Team leadership

SOP development

Cross-functional collaboration

Dashboard reporting

Communication skills

SQL basics

Tools

SQL (basic)

Job description

About Salsa

Salsa is a leading embedded payroll provider. We partner with software businesses to build industry-specific payroll businesses. Behind the scenes we're a large scale money mover in both the US and Canada; we pull funds from employers, pay workers as well as tax authorities. As you can imagine, managing fraud and credit risk is a mission critical work stream for Salsa.

About the Role

Salsa is hiring a Risk Operations Lead to help build and scale our risk operations function. In this role, you will manage Risk Analysts and strengthen controls, improve processes, and help Salsa grow responsibly in a complex payroll and payments environment.

We’re looking for someone who is both a builder and an operator: a Self‑. Not.

What You’ll Do

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Risk Analysts responsible for day-to-day risk operations

• Serve as the escalation point for the risk analyst team — make and document the judgment calls on ambiguous cases, and turn those decisions into repeatable decision trees

• Build and improve SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, and review processes across manual review and case management

• Improve team performance, operational rigor, and overall risk outcomes

• Work cross‑functionally with Product, Engineering, and Operations to implement controls, improve tooling, and scale risk operations

• Monitor trends and key metrics such as fraud rate, loss rate, and approval rate to identify issues and opportunities

• Help refine controls and policies related to fraud, payroll risk, ACH exposure, reversals, faster payroll, and credit exposure

• Be a steady operator during high‑severity incidents — fraud attacks, payment disruptions.

• Own fraud and operational‑risk expertise for the team day to day.

What We’re Looking For

• 4+ years of experience in risk, fraud, trust and safety, payments, payroll risk, or similar operational teams

• Experience managing and developing analysts or operators in queue‑based, case‑management, or manual‑review environments

• Proven ability to build SOPs, workflows, and escalation structures from scratch

• Strong background in fintech, payroll, embedded finance, or payments

• Strong understanding of fraud risk and operational risk in payroll or payments, including ACH timing, reversals, funds flow, faster payroll implications, and credit exposure

• Ability to balance risk mitigation with customer friction and clearly communicate those tradeoffs

• Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills, especially in partnership with Product, Engineering, and Operations

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across frontline teams and leadership

• Comfort building dashboards, reports, and operational metrics to guide decisions

• Experience evaluating risk engine or rule performance

• Experience navigating incidents and operating effectively in ambiguity

Nice to Have

• Ability to pull or interpret basic SQL queries

• Experience in early‑stage or high‑growth startup environments

• Customer onboarding and/or credit underwriting experience

• Experience in roles such as early risk hire, fraud operations manager, payroll risk analyst, payments manager or analyst, or trust and safety lead

• Experience at payroll or fintech companies processing high volume ACH / EFT payments in US and Canada (debit (pull) and credit (push)).

Why Join Salsa

This is an opportunity to play a meaningful role in building the risk operations foundation for a growing embedded payroll company. You’ll help shape how Salsa manages risk at scale, support and develop a high-performing team, and work on important problems at the intersection of payroll, payments, and operations.