Chief Risk Architect – Payments & Fraud

Modern Treasury; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 340,000; Full time

Job summary

Modern Treasury is hiring a Head of Risk to build our risk function from the ground up. You will decide how customers are underwritten, how limits and reserves are set, and how transactions are authorized, building systems before scale forces decisions on you.

You will collaborate across Engineering, Product, Compliance, and Finance to ensure risk and compliance run on a single, coherent platform. This foundational, hands-on role reports to the General Counsel.

Qualifications

• Built a risk function at an early-stage or high-growth company.
• Deep understanding of ACH returns, settlement timing, and counterparty risk.
• Curiosity about new rails (stablecoins, wallets, international rails).
• Systems thinker who designs for high volume and automated decisions.
• Comfortable with SQL and Python and applying AI tools to operations.

Responsibilities

• Own onboarding and underwriting decisions for customers.
• Define real-time transaction risk and dynamic limits.
• Set reserves and exposure policies across loss scenarios.
• Select and deploy risk tooling (vendor/in-house) and automate case handling.
• Expand into new rails, wallets, and money-movement patterns while maintaining safety.

Skills

Risk leadership

Payments risk

KYB onboarding

Fraud detection

Data fluency

Job description

Modern Treasury is hiring a Head of Risk to build our risk function from the ground up. You will decide how customers are underwritten, how limits and reserves are set, and how transactions are authorized, building systems before scale forces decisions on you.

You will collaborate across Engineering, Product, Compliance, and Finance to ensure risk and compliance run on a single, coherent platform. This foundational, hands-on role reports to the General Counsel.