Risk Operations Lead

Company Description

FRIDAY is dedicated to simplifying work for small businesses, offering a platform for managing hourly teams with features like time tracking, payroll, and team communication. Unlike traditional Human Capital Management platforms, FRIDAY is tailored for the busiest businesses, allowing you to focus on what truly matters for your business success. Join the FRIDAY community to experience how we can make work easier for you at fridayapp.com

About the Role

FRIDAY is hiring a Risk Operations Lead to help build and scale our risk operations function. In

this role, you will manage Risk Analysts and work closely with the Head of Risk to strengthen

controls, improve processes, and help us grow responsibly in a complex payroll and

payments environment.

We're looking for someone who is both a builder and an operator: a hands-on leader who can

design effective processes from scratch, guide a team through ambiguity, and make thoughtful

decisions that balance risk with customer experience.

What You'll Do

● Lead, coach, and develop a team of Risk Analysts responsible for day-to-day risk

operations

● Build and improve SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, and review processes across

manual review and case management

● Partner with the Head of Risk to improve team performance, operational rigor, and

overall risk outcomes

● Work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and Operations to implement

controls, improve tooling, and scale risk operations

● Monitor trends and key metrics such as fraud rate, loss rate, and approval rate to identify

issues and opportunities

● Help refine controls and policies related to fraud, payroll risk, ACH exposure, reversals,

faster payroll, and credit exposure

● Lead through high-severity incidents, including fraud attacks and operational disruptions,

with sound judgment and calm execution

● Serve as a subject matter expert on fraud and operational risk in payroll and payments

environments

What We're Looking For

● 2-3+ years of experience leading risk, fraud, trust and safety, payments, payroll risk, or

similar operational teams

● Experience managing and developing analysts or operators in queue-based,

case-management, or manual-review environments

● Proven ability to build SOPs, workflows, and escalation structures from scratch

● Strong background in fintech, payroll, embedded finance, or payments

● Strong understanding of fraud risk and operational risk in payroll or payments, including

ACH timing, reversals, funds flow, faster payroll implications, and credit exposure

● Ability to balance risk mitigation with customer friction and clearly communicate those

tradeoffs

● Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, especially in partnership with Product,

Engineering, and Operations

● Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate

effectively across frontline teams and leadership

● Comfort building dashboards, reports, and operational metrics to guide decisions

● Experience evaluating risk engine or rule performance

● Experience navigating incidents and operating effectively in ambiguity

Nice to Have

● Ability to pull or interpret basic SQL queries

● Experience in early-stage or high-growth startup environments

● Experience in roles such as early risk hire, fraud operations manager, payroll risk

analyst, payments manager or analyst, or trust and safety lead

● Experience at companies such as Square, Stripe, Gusto, Shopify, Brex, Mercury, Deel,

or Rippling

Why Join Us

This is an opportunity to play a meaningful role in building the risk operations foundation for a

growing embedded payroll company. You'll help shape how Friday manages risk at scale,

support and develop a high-performing team, and work on important problems at the intersection of payroll, payments and operations.`

intersection of payroll, payments, and operations.