[Hiring] Head of Risk @OnHires

Role Description

This is a senior, hands-on leadership role. You will be the company’s Head of Risk, a member of the leadership team reporting directly to the CEO. The function starts as a one-person department and may grow as it matures. A foundation already exists: a risk register, risk appetite statement, DORA vendor risk work, and governance drafts. Your mission is to turn it into a proactive, decision-oriented risk function. That means bringing risk to leadership before it becomes a problem, and being a fast, credible partner to the commercial and product teams rather than a bottleneck.

What you will own

• Enterprise risk framework:
  • risk taxonomy
  • risk appetite and tolerances
  • risk register
  • escalation policy
  • three-lines-of-defence model
• Risk reporting:
  • regular risk dashboards for the CEO and leadership
  • board/committee reporting
  • risk-related regulatory reporting
• DORA:
  • ICT risk management
  • incident classification and reporting
  • third-party ICT risk
  • Register of Information
• Licensing:
  • operational risk
  • capital adequacy
  • liquidity and safeguarding frameworks for new e-money authorisations in parallel jurisdictions
• B2B partner and counterparty risk:
  • onboarding risk scoring
  • risk-tiered monitoring
  • risk sign-off on material partnerships
  • concentration risk
• Financial and market risk, jointly with Finance:
  • crypto price exposure
  • settlement and liquidity risk
  • counterparty exposure to liquidity providers and banking partners
  • capital adequacy monitoring
• Operational resilience:
  • business continuity
  • disaster recovery
  • vendor risk
  • major incident reporting
• Fraud risk appetite:
  • acceptable loss rates by channel, product and geography
  • unified across the teams that currently share it
• Product risk:
  • risk assessment and launch gating for new products and markets
  • involved early rather than at the finish line
• Risk governance and culture:
  • running the risk committee
  • building risk ownership across business units

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years in financial services or fintech risk, including at least 3–4 years at a senior risk leadership level (Head of Risk, VP Risk, or equivalent)
• Direct experience in a regulated fintech, payment institution, EMI, PSP, or crypto business
• Hands-on experience with at least one of:
  • DORA ICT risk
  • MiCA (CASP) risk requirements
  • PSD2 payment institution operational and security risk
• A clear track record of owning risk outcomes, not only advising on them
• The ability to give a clear risk position and recommendation under incomplete information
• The ability to communicate risk in business language, in terms of impact, cost and options
• Fluent professional English

Requirements

• Previous Head of Risk / CRO role at a regulated fintech, EMI, PSP or crypto company (nice to have)
• Experience building a risk function from scratch in a scaling business (nice to have)
• Experience with crypto custody risk, MiCA capital requirements, or Travel Rule implementation (nice to have)
• Third-party / vendor risk management at scale, especially in B2B or embedded-finance models (nice to have)
• Experience chairing a risk committee or reporting to a board (nice to have)
• FRM, PRM, or a comparable qualification (nice to have)
• Russian language (nice to have)

Benefits

• A seat on the leadership team and direct access to the founders
• Real ownership: you shape the risk function and its role in the business
• A remote-first setup, with periodic in-person time at the European HQ
• Long-term B2B contract with performance- and OKR-linked bonus
• 20 paid working days off per year
• Paid sick leave
• Health insurance
• A professional development budget
• Team events