Head of Risk and Money Services

Head of Risk & Money Services

At Gusto, we help more than 500,000 small businesses create great places to work for their people. We do this through modern payroll, employee benefits, expert HR, and financial services.

We are searching for a seasoned financial services operator and regulated-domain leader to own one of Gusto's most consequential customer-facing functions: Risk & Money Services. This role sits within CX and Gusto's Financial Services organization and reports directly to the Head of Financial Services.

Every dollar that moves through Gusto's platform — payroll being delivered on time, wages being deposited into Gusto Wallet, cash advances being issued, disputes being resolved — carries real financial and regulatory weight. Risk & Money Services is the team that protects this trust at the most critical edges of money movement: fraud and payment risk decisioning, Reg E dispute operations, collections, and the consumer money products that sit at the intersection of and its small business mission.

This function spans three interconnected practices:

• Risk Operations — fraud ops, account takeover detection, payment-risk decisioning, and collections across both employer and employee money movement. This team makes real-time, high-stakes decisions on whether payroll goes out when something looks wrong, BSA/AML compliance, whether a fund recovery effort can be executed in time, and whether a fraud signal warrants action. The financial impact of individual calls is material. Focusing on risk mitigation and exceptional service is no easy task
• Dispute Operations — Reg E dispute processing across Gusto's banking and money-movement products, from intake through resolution and provisional credit decisioning. This team owns Gusto's most regulated customer-facing process and operates at the intersection of customer trust and regulatory obligation.
• Money Services and Banking — the operational home for Gusto Wallet, Cash Advance, and Gusto's expanding consumer financial products. This team is responsible for building the operational infrastructure that supports Gusto's growth in consumer banking — while protecting the customers who depend on it.

You will lead this organization through a senior leadership team, who carry full ownership for their function's outcomes, not just execution within it.Partner deeply with Compliance, Legal, Engineering, and Product across Gusto's products, and serve as the operational owner of the functions that sit at the regulated edge of Gusto's financial platform

This is a builder's role. Risk & Money Services is being stood up as a defined function within a new domain — you will set the SLAs, design the controls, build the metrics framework, establish the governance, and create the playbook that lets Gusto move money with confidence and scale.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That's why we're committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually.

Here's what you'll do

• Own Risk & Money Services end to end. Be the single accountable leader for fraud and payment risk decisioning, BSA/AML compliance, Reg E dispute operations, collections, and the operational backbone of Gusto's money products. Own the customer experience, the regulatory posture, and the financial outcomes across this entire function.
• Lead a multi-disciplinary regulated financial services organization through leaders who lead. Direct an organization spanning risk operations, dispute and fraud operations, and consumer money — through leaders who own their function end to end, whom you'll continue to develop, hire, and scale. Be the keeper of quality, speed, and regulatory integrity across all three practices.
• Stand up Risk & Money Services as a defined operational function. Define the governance, the metrics framework, the SLAs, and the reporting infrastructure for a function that is being formalized for the first time. Build the operating muscle — controls documentation, audit readiness, workforce management, and escalation frameworks — that makes this domain run with the reliability a regulated function requires.
• Own the highest-stakes real-time financial decisions in Gusto's customer operations. Be accountable for the decisions your team makes every day on whether payroll goes out when something looks wrong, whether a dispute warrants provisional credit, whether a fraud signal warrants action, and whether a fund recovery effort can be executed in time. These decisions carry material financial impact for customers and for Gusto — and they happen in real time.
• Own Gusto's Reg E compliance posture at the operational level. Lead the operational program that governs Gusto's Reg E dispute obligations — intake, investigation, provisional credit, resolution, and customer communication — in partnership with Compliance and Legal. Ensure the team's practices are auditable, scalable, and consistently defensible.
• Lead BSA/AML operational response. Own the customer-facing operational work triggered by BSA/AML alert activity — transaction monitoring response, customer outreach, account action — in partnership with Gusto's Compliance program. Ensure operational response meets the timeliness and documentation standards required by Gusto's sponsor bank relationships and regulatory obligations.
• Build Consumer Money for growth. Own the operational infrastructure for Gusto Wallet, Cash Advance, and Gusto's expanding consumer financial product suite. Build the SOPs, workforce model, controls, and SLAs that support consumer product growth while protecting the customers who depend on these products.
• Drive AI-native transformation in a regulated financial domain. Partner with Gusto's shared service platform and AI organization to bring AI agents, semantic knowledge, and automation capabilities into Risk & Money Services — accelerating fraud decisioning speed, dispute throughput, and risk signal accuracy while protecting the regulatory accountability this domain requires.
• Be the operational counterpart to Product, Engineering, and Risk partners. Operate as the direct customer experience and operational owner across Gusto's money and risk product organizations — translating the operational and regulatory reality of risk and money movement into product priorities, and translating product roadmap into operational and regulatory readiness.
• Represent Risk & Money Services externally. Be the direct voice with Gusto's sponsor bank partners, regulators, and auditors on matters affecting risk and money movement — not just the internal operator of the controls they require, but the leader they know and deal with directly.
• Build the playbook for new financial products. Establish Risk & Money Services as the operational home for the risk and money movement functions of Gusto's growing financial product portfolio — including business banking expansion, new money services, and future consumer financial products — with the controls and operational readiness already in place.
• Bring out the best in your people. Care deeply about the Gusties on your team. Help them do the best work of their careers, grow into bigger versions of themselves, and feel proud of building a risk and money function that protects Gusto's customers and the business at the same time.

Here's what we're looking for

• 12+ years of industry experience leading financial services operations in banking, payments, money movement, fraud and risk, or related regulated domains — with demonstrated depth in the mechanics of how money moves, where it fails, and how regulated institutions respond.
• 7+ years as a departmental leader running large, multi-disciplinary financial services operations teams — with experience managing through senior direct reports across distinct operational functions.
• Deep expertise in banking and money movement operations — including Reg E dispute processing, BSA/AML operational response, ACH and real-time payments risk, sponsor bank operational requirements, and the controls infrastructure that makes regulated money movement auditable.
• Hands-on background in fraud and payment risk — experience building or leading fraud operations that make real-time decisioning calls with material financial consequences, including payment risk scoring, account takeover response, and fund recovery operations.
• Experience in consumer financial products — operational background in consumer banking, digital wallet, cash advance, or similar products, including the SOPs, customer communications frameworks, and compliance controls these products require.
• Track record of standing up or formalizing regulated financial functions — building the SLAs, controls documentation, governance, and reporting infrastructure that make regulated work auditable, scalable, and defensible under examination.
• Demonstrated experience navigating sponsor bank and regulatory relationships — understanding how to operate within the constraints of a bank partnership, including audit readiness, operational policy alignment, and escalation to compliance and legal.
• Track record of leading through high-stakes, real-time financial decisions where individual calls carry material financial cost to customers or to the business.
• Experience building reliable, scalable, AI-native operations in regulated domains — with the judgment to know where automation accelerates and where regulatory accountability stays non-negotiable.
• Strong cross-functional muscle with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Legal, and Risk — particularly in fintech, banking, or financial product environments where operational leaders must drive product decisions, not just react to them.
• Track record of delivering on the diverse needs of multiple senior partners across overlapping financial product lines.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through significant organizational change — bringing teams along with clarity, candor, and consistency during periods of high operational flux.
• Empathetic and employee-focused: you care deeply about the people on your team, you help them achieve their personal and professional goals, and you enable them to do the best work of their lives.
• Track record of building diverse and inclusive teams.

Our cash compensation range for this role is $170,000 to 215,000 per year in Denver. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.