Salsa is a leading embedded payroll provider. We partner with software businesses to build industry-specific payroll businesses. Behind the scenes we're a large scale money mover in both the US and Canada; we pull funds from employers, pay workers as well as tax authorities. As you can imagine, managing fraud and credit risk is a mission critical work stream for Salsa.
About the RoleSalsa is hiring a Risk Operations Lead to help build and scale our risk operations function. In this role, you will manage Risk Analysts and strengthen controls, improve processes, and help Salsa 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 DoLead, coach, and develop a team of Risk Analysts responsible for day-to-day risk operations
Serve as the escalation point for the risk analyst team — make and document the judgment calls on ambiguous cases, and turn those decisions into repeatable decision trees
Build and improve SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, and review processes across manual review and case management
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
Be a steady operator during high-severity incidents — fraud attacks, payment disruptions.
Own fraud and operational-risk expertise for the team day to day.
4+ years of experience in 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
Ability to pull or interpret basic SQL queries
Experience in early-stage or high-growth startup environments
Customer onboarding and/or credit underwriting experience
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 payroll or fintech companies processing high volume ACH / EFT payments in US and Canada (debit (pull) and credit (push).
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 Salsa manages risk at scale, support and develop a high-performing team, and work on important problems at the intersection of payroll, payments, and operations.
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