Senior Specialist, Incident Response

Wealthsimple Technologies; United States; Hybride; USD 120 000 - 190 000; Plein temps

Avantages offerts par ce poste

Health benefits

Life insurance

Employer match

Vacation days

Wellness days

90 days abroad program

Résumé du poste

Wealthsimple is seeking a Senior Specialist, Incident Response to lead crisis coordination during major, complex, or reputation-sensitive events. You will take command in ambiguous situations and translate technical chaos into clear client and executive communications with the support of a high-performing team.

You’ll bridge engineering and business, draft rapid updates, help ensure regulatory checks are woven into response flows, and lead post-incident reviews to drive root-cause remediation

Qualifications

• 5+ years in major incident response, crisis communications, or tech ops in fintech/SaaS.
• Proven ability to lead live-fire Sev-1/P0 crises from start to finish.
• Translate logs and tech details into clear client and executive updates.

Responsabilités

• Deliver proactive briefs to senior leaders and craft external communications.
• Bridge engineering and business by translating logs into impact.
• Identify when Legal or Compliance review is needed during crises.
• Serve as chief editor for team communications and playbooks.
• Foster psychological safety and calm under active incidents.
• Determine involved stakeholders across Engineering, Product, CX, Legal, Risk.
• Navigate high-severity situations with executive expectations management.
• Partner with Data Science to quantify incident impact and drive post-incident reviews.

Connaissances

Major incident response

Crisis communications

Technical service operations

Executive communication

Async-first workflows

Cross-functional collaboration

Formation

Communications/PR training

Legal studies training

Outils

PagerDuty

Rootly

Datadog

Preset

SQL

Description du poste

Build something people love

Wealthsimple is Canada’s leading financial innovator. The company offers a full suite of simple, sophisticated financial products across managed investing, do-it-yourself trading, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending and saving. Wealthsimple currently serves more than 4 million Canadians and holds over $155 billion in assets under administration. The company was founded in 2014 by a team of financial experts and technology entrepreneurs, and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

We’re proud of what we’ve built — and we’re just getting started. Read our Culture Manual and learn more about how we work.

When high-stakes incidents strike, you are the calm in the storm. Senior Specialist, Incident Response, you will play the main part in incidents during major, complex, or reputation sensitive events. You take command of ambiguous situations, translate technical chaos into clear client and executive communication with the support of a high-performing team of Incident Response Specialists to raise the overall bar for crisis execution across the business.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Deliver proactive, cadence-based briefs to senior leaders while authoring clear, transparent external communications (status pages, app/web banners, client emails) in the Wealthsimple voice.

• Bridge the gap between engineering and the business and translating system logs, error codes, and technical root causes into plain-language client and business impact.

• Identify when Legal or Compliance review is required during a crisis and seamlessly weave regulatory checks into the response flow.

• Serve as a chief editor for team communications, establishing playbooks and writing standards that ensure accuracy, speed, and empathy under real-time pressure.

• Build a culture of psychological safety, calm, and focus: shielding responders from external noise during active incidents while keeping stakeholders aligned.

• Rapidly identify who needs to be involved across Engineering, Product, CX, Legal, and Risk, anticipating downstream friction before it happens.

• Navigate high-severity situations with confidence, managing executive expectations without distracting active responders.

• Partner with Data Science to quantify incident impact and lead post-incident reviews to drive root-cause remediation and long-term CX improvements.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 5+ years in major incident response, crisis communications, or technical service operations within fintech, high-growth SaaS, or fast-paced digital product environments. You have a proven track record leading live-fire, SEV-1/P0 operational crises from inception to resolution.

• Rapid, decisive judgment under pressure: You have a strong bias for action and excel at making quick, high-stakes decisions with incomplete information, knowing intuitively when to push forward, when to shift, and when to hold.

• Exceptional crisis communications & translation skills: You can digest raw system telemetry, logs, and engineer chatter, translating technical chaos into clear, empathetic client messaging and concise executive updates in real time.

• Tech-native and async-first operational fluency: You are deeply accustomed to modern tech workflows (Slack, Notion, linear incident bots) and thrive in fast, distributed environments where clear, documented async alignment is essential.

• Cross-functional network thinker: You intuitively map organizational ripple effects, rapidly engaging the right stakeholders across Engineering, Product, CX, Legal, Compliance, and Leadership before downstream friction occurs.

• Comfort with ambiguity and chaos: You stay composed when there is no playbook, bringing immediate structure, clarity, and psychological safety to high-stakes, reputationally sensitive events.

NICE TO HAVE

• Educational background or formal training in Communications, Public Relations, Journalism, Legal Studies, or a related discipline (or equivalent practical crisis communications experience).

• Incident tooling fluency: Comfortable navigating incident management platforms (PagerDuty, Rootly), monitoring tools (Datadog), and data tools (Preset, SQL) to understand system behavior and measure client impact.

• Risk intuition: Strong intuition for compliance, legal, and reputational risk within a regulated financial institution.

• Bilingualism: Fluency in both English and French.

Why Wealthsimple?

Top-tier health benefits and life insurance

Long-term group savings with employer match, through Wealthsimple for Business

20 vacation days, 4 wellness days, and unlimited sick and mental health days per year*

90 days away: work outside Canada for up to 90 days per year*

Employee resource groups, including Rainbow (2SLGBTQ), Women of WS, and Black at WS

We are a hybrid team with over 1,500 employees across North America. The people are one of the best parts of working here: you’ll collaborate with incredibly talented, curious, and driven teammates who are deeply committed to doing great work.

*Unlimited paid sick days, Wellness Days and the 90 day away program do not apply to certain roles.

ICYMI

Technology & Innovation at Wealthsimple: We move quickly and build thoughtfully. That means we’re always looking for better ways to work — whether that’s new tools, AI, or rethinking how we approach a problem. We don’t expect you to have all the answers, but we do expect curiosity and a willingness to evolve alongside the products we’re building.

Inclusion Statement: We’re building products for a diverse world, and we need a diverse team to do it well. We strongly encourage applications from everyone, regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.

Accessibility Statement: We’re committed to an accessible hiring experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please let us know — we’ll work with you to make sure you have what you need. We also welcome any feedback on how we can better accommodate candidates with accessibility needs.

AI in Hiring: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our team but don’t replace human judgment – all final hiring decisions are made by people. If you have questions about how your data is used, reach out to us.