Director of Risk Strategy

Salary: [Not Specified] Location Type: Remote Employment Type: Full-Time

Position Overview

Relay is an all-in-one, collaborative money management platform dedicated to increasing the success rate of small businesses. We are transforming traditional banking from a growth limiter into a growth enabler for business owners. We are building for employer SMBs and their finance functions, focusing on delivering a human-centric customer experience to help SMBs be ‘on the money’.

We are seeking a Director of Risk Strategy to elevate our risk operations. We have established a strong foundation with a skilled team, robust infrastructure, and effective strategies that have successfully managed fraud losses. Now, we are entering a new phase of growth and require experienced leadership to mature our risk function.

In this role, you will bring your experience, leadership, and vision to drive automation and intelligence into our systems, develop and mentor a growing team, and collaborate cross-functionally to deliver secure and scalable products. You will significantly impact Relay's growth by minimizing fraud while maintaining a high customer experience.

Joining Relay offers the opportunity to make a substantial impact by building solutions with the potential to reach 29 million small businesses across North America. With over 100,000 customers and strong growth, we are beyond the startup phase, yet there is still a vast amount to build. If you are passionate about shaping the future of fintech and building impactful systems, we encourage you to apply.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve Relay’s fraud and risk strategy to support our next stage of growth.
• Scale the capabilities of our existing risk infrastructure by unlocking new sources of internal and external intelligence.
• Identify and address patterns in fraud activity to improve the accuracy and efficiency of decision-making.
• Drive a consistent march toward automation, including transaction reviews and customer interactions.
• Apply emerging technologies like AI to fraud detection, mitigation, and operations.
• Prioritize and influence cross-functional roadmaps to ensure risk-related needs are met across Product, Engineering, and Data.
• Partner with customer-facing and compliance teams on escalations, investigations, and high-impact incidents.
• Act as a key stakeholder in product rollouts to ensure risk and fraud implications are addressed early.
• Cultivate strong relationships and partner closely with Sales & Growth teams to understand their objectives and concerns, and proactively identify how risk strategies can support their goals without creating unnecessary friction.
• Build, mentor, and develop the next generation of risk leaders—empowering them with autonomy and growing their thought leadership.
• Represent risk as an organizational leader, influencing strategy and shaping team structure as we scale.

Who You Are

• You have significant experience in fraud, risk strategy, or related roles, ideally within fintech or banking.
• You have successfully led and scaled a risk team, demonstrating an ability to develop high-potential talent into future leaders.
• You are a strategic thinker who is also comfortable rolling up your sleeves and executing.
• You are a builder with a proven track record of implementing automated systems, tools, and processes to manage risk.
• You have strong data instincts and a deep understanding of how data can be analyzed and leveraged for proactive or real-time risk decisions.
• You are deeply collaborative and can drive initiatives across teams and functions.
• You are excited by the challenge of solving complex risk problems with limited resources and high urgency.
• You know how to advocate for your team’s priorities and influence stakeholders across the company.
• You are passionate about small business and want to help underserved entrepreneurs thrive.

Bonus Points

• Experience applying AI/ML to fraud detection and prevention.