Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.
The team
Payward Services is an enterprise infrastructure platform that enables companies to seamlessly integrate trading, payments, funding, and digital asset services through a single unified system. It provides coordinated liquidity, custody, compliance, risk management, and settlement capabilities, reducing operational complexity for fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers.
We are looking for a Head of Operations, Platform Product to join our Payward Services team. This is a jack-of-all-trades operator: someone who has done the consulting-to-operating transition, is hungry for a remit that outstrips their years, can go as deep on a product flow as on a regulatory filing, and wants to help build a regulated B2B2C business from the inside.
You will own the operational running of some of our US regulated entities acting as their functional operating lead; support the licensing workstreams that expand that footprint through to approval; and drive the special projects and platform-growth initiatives that move our Payward Services business forward.
The opportunity
- Own platform product operations and launch readiness for our B2B2C products (KYC/KYB, lending, unified APIs). Gate go-lives against regulatory and operational requirements, and build the operations that let products ship fast and scale. You're comfortable diving deep into the product itself — how a flow works, where it breaks, and what it takes to launch it in a regulated market.
- Drive cross-functional execution on roadmap milestones, compliance deliverables, and infrastructure work — running complex programs across Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and external partners.
- Run day-to-day operations across our US regulated entities, licensing maintenance, operational risk and incident management, outsourcing and intra-group coordination, audit and examination readiness, and Board / ExCo / management reporting. You act as the functional operating lead (functional-COO equivalent) for these entities.
- Lead the operational work behind our US licensing workstreams — state money transmitter licenses (including NMLS filings) and state lending licenses — partnering with Legal and Compliance to turn regulatory requirements into governance processes, controls, documentation, and the evidence examiners expect, and supporting each licence through to approval where needed.
- Serve as the operational counterpart to regulators and examiners alongside Legal and Compliance: information requests, supervisory queries, incident notifications, and closing out follow-up actions.
- Represent the operational side of the US regulated entities in board, regulatory, and executive discussions, and champion a high-leverage operating model — defining core metrics, improving systems, and elevating how we build and scale regulated B2B products.
What you bring
- 8–12 years of experience, with roots in strategy consulting (MBB, Big 4 strategy, or boutique) and a proven track record of operational execution in-house.
- Time spent operating inside a scaling fintech, bank, or crypto firm in roles like special projects, chief of staff, operations strategy, business/product operations, or operations lead — with a track record of taking on scope well beyond your title.
- Experience running or working on a B2B or B2B2C business in tech, ideally including running or supporting platform teams (shared infrastructure, APIs, internal-client / partner models).
- A genuine jack-of-all-trades who can dive into product: comfortable sitting with Product and Engineering and getting into the mechanics, not just managing from the outside.
- Working familiarity with the US regulated financial landscape and a feel for what supervision and examination actually involve. You can map regulation to business processes without a translator.
- Experience setting up or working with compliance programs, including KYC / KYB onboarding programs.
- A track record of running complex cross-functional programs with no formal authority, and of picking up work outside your job description because it needed doing.
- Applies rigorous governance and control standards while remaining pragmatic about process — able to distinguish between controls that genuinely protect the business and procedures that simply add friction without corresponding value.
- An excellent communicator across regulators, boards, engineers, and commercial partners.
- Comfortable with ambiguity, a broad remit, and a title that means ownership rather than headcount. You measure yourself by what you ship and land — and that's what excites you.
Nice to haves
- Hands-on experience supporting or leading a regulatory-change program, end to end.
- Crypto or digital-assets experience, in industry or through regulated product launches, including familiarity with crypto-native operations (treasury and custody).
- Former founder, GM, or early operations hire at a fintech or crypto startup.
Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Our commitment
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
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Compensation Range: $96K - $192K
