Senior Risk Analyst - Issuance

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.

We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 125+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we’ve managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states. 

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we’re helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don’t exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we’re unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen. 

The Opportunity: 

Highnote is looking for a Senior Risk Analyst to join our risk operations efforts. This is an opportunity to bring your prior experience and tool kit to an early stage company where you will work with support, compliance, and product leadership to help build our risk operations from the ground up. Ideal candidates will have similar experience in ambiguous environments fulfilling a variety of roles, along with a knowledge of USA PATRIOT Act, OFAC, BSA/Anti-Money Laundering principles, Know Your Business and Know Your Customer processes, fraud investigations, and regulatory requirements for bank, card, or similar industries.

What you’ll need to be wildly successful: 

• Focus on quality while maintaining high-quantity output. This role requires an individual who can tackle problems and queues efficiently, while still maintaining a high-level of accuracy needed for risk-related matters. A solid risk operations knowledge base in a fintech related field and to say “you learn quickly” is a gross understatement.
• Maintain a strong and healthy sense of curiosity. You have a desire to understand the root-cause to any problem, evaluate explanations provided, and perform due diligence to validate your understanding. This spans across all aspects of your work, from reviewing new applications, to investigating leads, to participating in testing discussions with sponsor banks, and to verifying suspicious behavior understanding that the findings can have serious implications. 
• Empathy for customers and an ability to glean insights from customer communication and behaviors. You have an innate ability to feel the customer’s pain while balancing the risk and regulatory requirements to process payments. You can articulate the why behind the what with clarity and defend your position without disclosing confidential details. You can quickly identify genuine concerns and potentially suspicious behaviors from answers customers share. You act as a teacher helping others understand the risk requirements.
• Ability to assess the big picture with a refined detail-oriented approach. You are able to contribute risk requirements to enterprise-wide initiatives while not losing sight of the day-to-day needs and team operations.
• Advocate for the teams you work with and service. This role is heavily risk and compliance oriented. Risk and compliance can sometimes appear at odds with the goals of sales and marketing teams. You are able to demonstrate the value of your products and initiatives.
• Self-awareness is key.  You have a strong sense of self, know your strengths and where you have blindspots that you want to improve. You position yourself to make the most of your super powers and shore up your weaknesses.

What you’ll be doing:

• Perform Know Your Business and Know Your Customer reviews on new subscriber applications in accordance with Customer Identification Program to verify accuracy and intent in order to obtain an account.
• Verify application details and documents provided to ensure they meet criteria outlined in policies, are valid and legitimate.
• Assess ongoing risk and due diligence needs for newly onboarded customers abiding by enterprise policies.
• Analyze transaction data to identify fraud, credit, and compliance risks and perform risk mitigating actions where appropriate.  
• Investigate and complete comprehensive due diligence on accounts that flag in transaction monitoring, chargeback activity, AML, fraud, and sanctions reports.
• Document risk decisioning with supporting evidence and capture risk mitigation actions taken.
• Accurately complete referrals for Suspicious Activity Reporting.
• Defining and adapting risk approaches to ever-evolving trends in order to protect the company against risk posed by operations and subscriber activity.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience on a risk team with a focus on CIP, BSA/AML principles, fraud investigations, and suspicious activity reporting 
• Demonstrated knowledge of regulatory obligations for payment and/or card issuing platforms
• Experience in working in risk at a Bank or other financial institution
• Successful under pressure and with shortened deadlines
• Demonstrated success developing inventive solutions to complex problems

Bonus Qualifications:

• CAMS, CFE, and/or CFCS certification
• SQL, BigQuery experience
• Experience presenting to and collaborating with executive teams

Why Highnote?

• We’re an early stage startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization. 
• We’re a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the fintech world, some of us don’t. We value the varied backgrounds and the diverse perspectives of our employees. 
• We’re small on hierarchy and big on growth. We’re a flat organization that allows everyone to have direct exposure to our leadership team. We are looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity. 
• We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Westcap, and  Pinegrove Venture Partners. Angel Investors include Bill Ready (CEO at Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder & CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote benefits

• Flexible Paid Time Off 
• 100% healthcare coverage + 75% coverage for dependents
• 401k program
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks paid leave for the birth parent, and up to 6 weeks paid leave for the non-birth parent
• Equity in Highnote
• Stipend to build out your home office; internet and phone reimbursement
• At Highnote we have built a total rewards philosophy that includes fair, equitable, geo-based compensation that is performance and potential based. Our compensation packages are competitive based on robust market research and are a combination of a cash salary, equity, and benefits. In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the annual salary range for applicants is $90,000-130,000.

Highnote is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people from all backgrounds and identities to apply. We do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by US federal state or local laws, or the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e.: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).