Strategic Finance Lead - Risk & Operations

Mercury; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 171,000 - 214,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercury, a modern banking solution for startups, is seeking a Strategic Finance Lead to enhance Risk and Operations functions. This role involves owning financial partnerships, workforce planning, and evaluating customer strategies, all vital for supporting company growth while ensuring operational excellence.

Benefits

Equity (stock options)

Comprehensive benefits

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in consulting, investment banking, or high-growth tech.
• Deeply analytical and fluent in business modeling and financial planning.
• Experience collaborating with Risk and Operations teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead finance partner to Risk and Operations leadership driving strategic decisions.
• Analyze workforce design and customer segmentation for efficient scaling.
• Connect growth to operations for supporting customer acquisition strategy.

Skills

Analytical skills

Business modeling

Financial planning

Problem solving

Job description

Strategic Finance Lead - Risk & Operations

San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Portland, OR, or Remote within Canada or United States

Role Overview

In a world where trust is earned transaction by transaction, world-class Risk and Operations organizations are not just support functions—they are a competitive edge. Mercury’s Risk and Ops teams are the backbone of our customer experience and a key driver of sustainable growth. We’re hiring a Strategic Finance Lead to partner at the heart of these functions and shape how they evolve as we scale.

Mercury is modernizing banking* for startups and ambitious companies, and we’re growing fast. To scale effectively, we’re looking for a high-impact Strategic Finance Lead to own financial partnership with some of our largest and most complex teams - our Risk and Operations organizations. Collectively, these teams span several hundred employees, and are the face of Mercury to our 200,000+ customers and hundreds of thousands of applicants. These teams are essential to how we support our customers, manage fraud, and deliver operational excellence—and their size and complexity require sharp financial thinking to scale sustainably.

As the Strategic Finance Lead for Risk & Ops, you’ll be the dedicated finance partner supporting tens of millions in annual spend, advising on organizational design, workforce planning, customer segmentation strategy, and crafting a plan for supporting user and product growth efficiently and in a way that preserves Mercury high quality standards.

*Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust; Members FDIC

What You’ll Do

• Be the lead finance partner to Risk and Operations leadership—driving strategic decisions and helping these orgs scale efficiently as they grow
• Analyze workforce design: How big should our teams be? How do we balance in-house vs. outsourced labor? What’s the right staffing model to deliver on our SLAs while optimizing cost?
• Evaluate customer segmentation: How do we profitably serve small business and personal banking customers in addition to larger startups while maintaining compliance and service standards?
• Connect growth to operations: Understand how risk and operations enable our customer acquisition strategy, and build plans that enable us to support growth reliably and efficiently
• Work with leadership on future-forward, ambiguous questions about how our Risk and Ops teams should evolve—partnering on big bets and operational improvements

You Might Be a Fit If You:

• Have 8+ years of experience in consulting, investment banking, private equity, or high-growth tech (with deep exposure to strategic finance, FP&A, or bizops).
• Have been in positions where you have collaborated with Risk and/or Operational teams (or other teams with significant customer, product / growth, and regulatory dynamics to balance)
• Are deeply analytical and fluent in business modeling, financial planning, and interpreting the “so what” of the numbers.
• Thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and enjoy designing new frameworks to answer complex questions.
• Are curious to the core—you don’t stop at surface-level understanding and are eager to dive into how Mercury’s operations actually work.
• Understand how to see the forest from the trees: You can zoom out to explain why a trend matters at the exec level, while still being in the weeds on workforce models or performance KPIs.
• Bring abias toward action and enjoy being a hands-on problem solver—this is not a whiteboard-only strategy job.

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options), and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $171,000 - 213,700
• US employees outside of New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $153,900 - 192,300
• Canadian employees (any location): CAD 161,600 - 201,900

Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began usingCovey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Coveyhere .

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