Global Regulatory & Licensing Program Lead

Circle; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Circle is seeking a Regulatory and Licensing Program Manager to drive licensing applications from strategy to approval across multiple markets. This role involves coordinating cross-functional teams, managing regulatory timelines, and guiding executive briefings, with a strong emphasis on responsible AI usage and risk management.

You will own program plans, align stakeholders, and scale processes across time zones to support Circle's global regulatory strategy for digital assets and payments.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of program or project management experience, including at least 4 years supporting regulatory, licensing, legal or compliance work at a financial services, fintech or similarly regulated company.
• Direct involvement in at least one licence, registration, or charter application, from early requirements to submission, or in a regulatory examination or remediation carried end to end.
• Experience delivering complex, multi-month programs with many dependencies and a deadline you do not control.
• The ability to hold senior colleagues to commitments you have no authority to enforce, and to raise a risk before it is comfortable to do so.
• Daily, practical use of AI in your own work. You reach for it first on research, analysis, and internal reporting, and you know where a person still has to check the output.
• A track record of building with AI, not only prompting it. You have shipped reporting workflows, automations, or internal tools that other people use, in environments like Claude, Vibebox or equivalent.
• Strong written communication. You can turn a large set of inputs into a one-page status that an executive can act on.
• The discipline to follow a requirement all the way to close, and sound judgment with confidential and privileged material.
• Flexibility on working hours to support licensing and regulatory activity across time zones, from regular engagement with regulators in other regions to occasional deadline- or regulator-driven demands outside normal business hours.
• Familiarity with generative AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) and prompt development.

Responsibilities

• Supporting Circle's licensing applications end-to-end, from the case for entering a market through to approval, running several programs at once.
• Building the program plan for each market – sequencing, dependencies, owners, dates – and holding it as the plan everyone works from.
• Partnering with cross-functional teams, including Legal, Commercial, Compliance, Finance, Treasury, Product, Engineering, People & Workplace, and others to turn regulatory requirements into executable plans.
• Facilitating working sessions and executive steering committee briefings that drive programs forward, from setting the agenda and framing decisions to closing the loop on outcomes.
• Tracking and managing risks across all active programs, owning the escalation path and getting the right people involved early.
• Defining and managing the reporting and metrics that give senior leadership and cross-functional partners an accurate, up-to-date picture of every market in the portfolio.
• Establishing and evolving scalable service standards for how Circle runs regulatory and licensing programs.
• Supporting, as directed, in external procurement activities across scoping, contracting, budget, and delivery.
• Strengthening how the global policy organization works: bringing the same discipline to consultations, submissions, briefings and events, and to whatever else the team needs run well.
• Serving as the go-to for program management across the global policy organization, setting the standard for how programs are run and helping team members strengthen their approach to planning, communication, and execution.

Skills

Program management

Regulatory/compliance

AI in workflows

Written communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

Tools

Slack

MacOS

GSuite

Job description

Circle is seeking a Regulatory and Licensing Program Manager to drive licensing applications from strategy to approval across multiple markets. This role involves coordinating cross-functional teams, managing regulatory timelines, and guiding executive briefings, with a strong emphasis on responsible AI usage and risk management.

You will own program plans, align stakeholders, and scale processes across time zones to support Circle's global regulatory strategy for digital assets and payments.