Senior Director of Payments Risk, GoFundMe
$202.5-304k
+ Equity + Bonus
SQL
Looker
Expert level
Remote from US
Social fundraising platform
Open for applications
Social fundraising platform
501-1000 employees
B2CB2BFundraisingSocialCharityCrowdfunding
Open for applications
$202.5-304k
+ Equity + Bonus
SQL
Looker
Expert level
Remote from US
501-1000 employees
B2CB2BFundraisingSocialCharityCrowdfunding
Company mission
To help people fundraise for the personal, business, and charitable causes that matter most to them.
Role
Who you are
- This is a role for someone who thrives in high intensity environments, embraces scrappiness, and brings courage of conviction, clarity of communication, and a collaborative spirit
- 10–15+ years of progressively senior payments risk and compliance experience, ideally with early-career hands-on work as an analyst
- Background at modern payments companies, processors, or fintechs
- Deep understanding of payments processing, merchant onboarding, underwriting, credit risk, fraud detection, and AML/CTF program management
- Experience leading CDD/EDD, KYC/KYB, and transaction monitoring teams
- Strong working knowledge of AML, sanctions, card network rules, and global (especially EU) best practices
- Ability to analyze complex datasets, interpret ambiguous situations, and make high-stakes decisions under pressure
- Demonstrated experience managing and developing distributed global teams in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment
- Experience partnering with communications or public affairs on high-profile or sensitive risk scenarios
- Resilient, and able to handle escalations with clarity, confidence, and composure
- Courage of conviction paired with humility—able to hold the line on regulatory requirements while staying collaborative and open-minded
- A master communicator who can explain the “why” behind decisions in simple, non-technical language
- Ability to collaborate cross-functionally at all levels without ego or rigidity
- A natural team advocate who models GoFundMe’s core values
- True curiosity and willingness to deeply understand how work is done before driving changes
What the job involves
- The GoFundMe team is searching for our next Senior Director, Payments Risk with deep payments, fintech, and regulatory experience to lead and scale our compliance, CDD/EDD, and risk monitoring capabilities
- This person will be responsible for driving strategy, partnering closely with executives, and navigating complex, high-stakes decisions, while ensuring the team feels supported, informed, and empowered
- There is a significant opportunity to transform the function, improve efficiency, strengthen controls, elevate GoFundMe’s global payments infrastructure, and further our mission to Help People Help Each Other
- Trust is at the core of GoFundMe’s business. It drives our growth, shapes our brand, and ensures we always do the right thing for our donors, organizers, and beneficiaries
- As we continue to evolve as a payments platform, the Payments Risk organization sits at the frontline of protecting our global community against fraud, financial crime, and abuse
- Serve as a senior leader for payments risk and compliance, acting as an expert advisor to the company and the Board on regulatory obligations, processing requirements, and financial crime risk
- Establish and continuously evolve frameworks for CDD, EDD, KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity management
- Lead GoFundMe’s evolution toward greater control of our own payments, collaborating deeply with multiple internal and external teams
- Apply a payments-centric mindset across GoFundMe, grounding the organization in the importance of having strong payment infrastructure
- Ensure compliance with AML, sanctions, card network rules, and relevant U.S. and international standards
- Oversee and coach teams responsible for analyzing fundraisers for fraud or money-laundering risks, verifying identities, enforcing financial compliance, and monitoring transactions
- Improve, track, and communicate loss reporting, ensuring root-cause analysis and implementation of compensating controls
- Guide the design and refinement of workflows across donation review, account review, dispute prevention, and merchant/payer fraud mitigation to reduce chargeback rates and losses
- Lead risk reviews, assessing financial exposure and creditworthiness
- Oversee recovery of negative balances and mitigations around potential or actualized losses
- Serve as a trusted partner to executives, product leaders, finance partners, engineering, comms/public affairs, and legal stakeholders
- Translate complex payments and regulatory requirements into clear, accessible explanations for teams without compliance backgrounds, especially in high-pressure situations
- Over-communicate when necessary, preparing leaders with context and framing to advocate effectively on risk decisions
- Bring nuance to strict regulatory requirements, recognizing when flexibility or context are needed, but never compromising on compliance
- Lead and scale distributed global payments risk teams (U.S. & Dublin), setting clear goals and expectations while nurturing an environment of psychological safety, resilience, and mutual support
- Act as a visible advocate for the team, ensuring they feel supported, defended, and positioned for success
- Create and deliver training on compliance obligations, payments risk, and best practices to a wide range of stakeholders
- Foster curiosity, empathy, and cross-functional understanding by embedding yourself in team workflows and modeling our core values
- Ensure the team maintains big-picture perspective, understanding both their slice of the work and how it impacts broader business goals
- Leverage SQL, Looker, and large transactional datasets to identify trends, detect anomalies, and inform strategic decisions
- Bring comfort working with imperfect or evolving tooling, driving clarity and efficiency
- Build and refine reporting frameworks that clearly articulate risk posture, performance against KPIs, and areas for operational improvement
Our take
One of the most well-known fundraising platforms in the world, GoFundMe makes raising money online exceptionally easy. The platform initially focused on charity and good causes, but its scope has now expanded to include start-up business funding. What makes the platform attractive is its ability to democratise fundraising through the medium of the online.
GoFundMe's rapid rise in popularity has been helped by its social media integrations and the speed at which individuals can start funds. With strategic foresight, the company launched its GoFundMe Guarantee in 2016, a pledge to protect donors from fraud or platform misuse - knowing that its continued growth could only be hampered by security issues or donor deception.
This guarantee is what has enabled the company to remain the largest crowdfunding platform in the world. Notably, it stands amongst the likes of Airbnb, Facebook, and Netflix in being backed by tech investors TCV.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Led by a woman
Top investors
-6% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Wide range of health insurance options, including medical, dental, and vision (GoFundMe covers 100% of employee premiums, and 80% of spouse and dependents)
- $600 annual fitness and wellness reimbursement
- Weekly massages
- Standing desks
- Fully-stocked kitchens & daily lunches
- Team off-sites & monthly social events
- Many of our offices are dog friendly
- 10 paid holidays, 17 days of accrued vacation per year, unlimited sick time & three volunteer days
- Enhanced parental leaves
- $50/month for employees commuting to and from work (public transit and/or parking)
- Caltrain GoPasses for our Bay Area commuters
- "Gives Back" program, where employees nominate fundraisers weekly for donations from GoFundMe
- Quarterly volunteer events in each office to give back to our local communities
- 401(k) retirement plan with company matching
- Access to learning tools and resources, including a subscription to Udemy, guest speakers, and internal brown bag sessions
Company HQ
Centennial, Redwood City, CA
Leadership
Margaret Richardson
(Chief Marketing & Corporate Affairs Officer)Formerly worked at Airbnb as Vice President of Trust and Director of Global Policy. They worked in Trust & Safety at Apple prior to becoming a Member of Pipeline Angels.
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