Operational Assurance Lead

Remote; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Work from anywhere

Flexible paid time off

Flexible working hours (async)

16 weeks paid parental leave

Budget for co-working spaces, learning

Mental health support services

Stock options

Home office budget & IT equipment

Job summary

Remote is seeking an Operational Assurance Lead to provide independent confidence that our controls work as we scale into new products and markets. You will design and execute testing, gather evidence, and deliver an informed opinion on control maturity to leadership and auditors.

You will partner with International Operations, Legal, Product and Payroll to ensure readiness before launches, define what is ready to scale, and help drive remediation with accountable owners.

Qualifications

• Experience in operational assurance or internal controls in global/regulated environments.
• Ability to design and run tests with sampling and evidence standards.
• Capacity to translate findings into business remediation actions.
• Comfort providing independent opinions supported by evidence.

Responsibilities

• Provide independent assurance that Remote can enter new markets and launch new products without unmanaged exposure.
• Run pre-launch assurance reviews for country launches and new operating models.
• Define readiness criteria for scale and ensure launch decisions are evidence-based.
• Give a clear assurance opinion at decision points with honesty where needed.
• Own controls testing across payroll, compliance and operations.
• Maintain a rolling assurance plan prioritized by exposure and scale.
• Set evidence standards and document results.
• Track gaps and remediation with owners and dates.

Skills

Operational assurance

Internal controls

Incident management

Controls testing

Sampling

Evidence standards

Remediation

Cross-functional collaboration

Risk evaluation

Documentation

Stakeholder influence

Async remote work

Job description

Job Description

As Operational Assurance Lead, you will give the business independent confidence that our controls work as we scale into new products and new markets. Your focus is evidence. You will test whether controls are designed properly and operating properly, confirm readiness before we launch and give leadership a clear view of where growth is running ahead of control maturity. The wider team owns governance frameworks, identifies & quantifies risk and strengthens compliance. You own the testing, the evidence and the independent opinion on whether controls are actually working. That separation is deliberate and it is what makes the assurance credible to leadership, auditors and customers. You will work closely with International Operations, Legal, Product, Payroll Operations and other teams to bring assurance into decisions early rather than validating them after the fact.

Responsibilities

Assurance for Scale

• Provide independent assurance that Remote can enter new markets and launch new products without unmanaged operational or compliance exposure
• Run pre launch assurance reviews for country launches, product releases and new operating models, confirming that the required controls exist and function before go live
• Define what ready to scale means in practice, so launch decisions are made against evidence rather than confidence
• Give a clear assurance opinion at decision points, including where the honest answer is not yet

Controls Effectiveness Testing

• Own controls effectiveness testing across payroll, compliance and operational processes, covering both design effectiveness and operating effectiveness
• Maintain a rolling assurance plan prioritised by exposure, regulatory risk and scale rather than testing everything at equal depth
• Set the evidence standard for testing, including sampling approach, what counts as sufficient evidence and how results are documented
• Track control gaps and failures through to remediation with named owners and agreed dates, then re test to confirm closure
• Build reusable testing approaches and evidence templates so assurance capacity scales without adding headcount

Partnering with IO, Legal and the Business

• Work alongside International Operations and Legal on market entry, product design and structural change, bringing an assurance view alongside legal advice and operational feasibility
• Translate legal and regulatory requirements into testable controls and clear operational obligations that teams can actually run
• Act as the single coordination point for assurance input into cross functional projects, so teams receive one view rather than several
• Work with the operational risk team so that testing is aimed at the risks they have identified and quantified as material, while keeping the testing and the opinion independent

Third Party and Vendor Assurance

• Assess the controls that sit around vendor and partner dependencies, including how external partners affect customers, service delivery and resilience
• Assure that agreed contractual and operational controls with third parties are being applied in practice, not just documented

Reporting and Audit Readiness

• Report assurance results to leadership with a clear opinion on control health, systemic themes and areas of concentration
• Strengthen audit readiness by keeping control documentation, testing records and evidence current and defensible
• Provide assurance input into customer security and compliance assessments where operational controls are in scope
• Escalate where risk is being accepted by default rather than by decision

Learning from Failure

• Use incidents, loss events and RCA outcomes as assurance inputs, testing whether agreed fixes actually held
• Identify systemic control weaknesses across teams and feed them back into the assurance plan

What you bring

• Strong experience in operational assurance, internal controls or incident management in a global or regulated environment
• Demonstrated ability to design and run controls testing, including sampling, evidence standards and re testing, and to translate findings into remediation the business will own
• Comfortable giving an independent opinion that may be unwelcome, and holding it with evidence rather than authority
• Experience working cross functionally across operations, product, compliance and technology teams
• Strong understanding of control design principles and risk evaluation methodologies
• Analytical mindset with the ability to identify patterns and systemic weaknesses
• Confident influencing senior stakeholders and driving accountability without direct authority
• Structured and organized with strong documentation and follow through
• Comfortable balancing commercial priorities with risk management discipline
• Systems thinker who looks beyond individual incidents to underlying root causes
• Comfortable operating in an async and fully remote environment

Practicals

• Reporting line: Manager, Global Payroll Strategy & Compliance
• Team: Payroll Risk & Compliance
• Location: Anywhere in the world
• Start date: As soon as possible

Application process

• Recruiter interview
• Hiring manager interview
• Team interview
• Bar Raiser Interview
• Offer and Prior employment verification check

Benefits

• work from anywhere
• flexible paid time off
• flexible working hours (we are async)
• 16 weeks paid parental leave
• budget towards co-working spaces, learning and wellness (including gym memberships)
• mental health support services
• stock options
• home office budget & IT equipment

How you’ll plan your day (and life)

We work async at Remote which means you can plan your schedule around your life (and not around meetings). Read more at remote.com/async. You will be empowered to take ownership and be proactive. When in doubt you will default to action instead of waiting. Your life-work balance is important and you will be encouraged to put yourself and your family first, and fit work around your needs.