Head of Risk & Risk Engineering

moderntreasury; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Modern Treasury is seeking a Head of Risk to build and lead the risk function from the ground up. You will decide underwriting standards, how limits and reserves are set, and how transactions are authorized, working to detect fraud with scalable systems.

You will report to the General Counsel and collaborate with Legal, Compliance, and Risk to align risk and product. This is a foundational, hands-on role requiring deep technical and analytical capabilities.

Qualifications

• Experience standing up a risk function at an early-stage or high-growth company.
• Understanding ACH returns, settlement timing, unauthorized debit exposure, and counterparty risk.
• Curiosity about new rails: stablecoins, wallets, local rails, or international rails.
• A systems thinker who designs for scale and observable risk outcomes.
• Technical and data fluency with SQL and Python; ability to work with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Onboarding & underwriting: evaluate customers and set conditions to approve quickly.
• Transaction risk & limits: real-time authorization and dynamic limit tuning.
• Reserves & exposure: quantify loss exposure and establish reserve policies.
• Detection & the risk engine: select/deploy tooling and automate decisions.
• New rails, stablecoins & wallet controls: expand safely into new rails with product controls.

Skills

Risk management

Payments knowledge

SQL

Python

Fraud detection

Decision making

Communication

Job description

Modern Treasury is seeking a Head of Risk to build and lead the risk function from the ground up. You will decide underwriting standards, how limits and reserves are set, and how transactions are authorized, working to detect fraud with scalable systems.

You will report to the General Counsel and collaborate with Legal, Compliance, and Risk to align risk and product. This is a foundational, hands-on role requiring deep technical and analytical capabilities.