Manager Legal, Risk & Compliance

Location: This role is fully remote but must overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 3 hours. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment Visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

About this role

The Manager, Legal, Risk & Compliance will play a foundational role in strengthening GiveDirectly’s governance systems as we scale. In this role, you will stand up GiveDirectly’s enterprise risk and controls function, designing the frameworks, tools, and reporting structures that allow the organization to identify, assess, and mitigate risk consistently across teams and geographies.

This is a builder role in its first phase – focused on developing the enterprise risk management (ERM) framework, risk register, and control documentation in partnership with Legal, Internal Audit, and operational teams. You’ll establish the systems that make risk management clear, coordinated, and actionable across the organization.

Once these systems are embedded, the role will transition into a broader Legal & Compliance capacity, supporting ongoing work in policy management, regulatory compliance, and governance reporting. Over time, this position will serve as a bridge between legal advice, risk management, and compliance operations – helping GiveDirectly maintain the structures that protect recipient trust and organizational integrity.

You’ll report to the Director, Legal & Compliance and collaborate closely with the Internal Audit and other functional leads to ensure risks are managed, controls are effective, and GiveDirectly’s operations remain legally sound and accountable.

Reports to: Director, Legal & Compliance 

Level: Manager

Travel Requirement: Must be able to travel ~1-2 times per year to one of our countries of operation for team retreats or field visits 

What you’ll do:

Strengthen and formalize GiveDirectly’s enterprise risk and controls framework

• Build on prior Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) efforts to create a consistent, ERM organization-wide framework, refining existing tools and approaches into a cohesive system.
• Develop and maintain an organizational risk register that consolidates risks across functions, assigns clear owners, and tracks mitigation progress.
• Create and document a controls library in collaboration with IA, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Operations – mapping key controls to risks and owners.
• Coordinate quarterly risk review cycles with leadership, surfacing key trends, mitigation updates, and emerging priorities.
• Partner with Internal Audit to align on control documentation, audit planning, and remediation tracking.

Integrate risk management into GiveDirectly’s legal and compliance systems

• Embed risk thinking into policy lifecycle management, compliance training, and contract governance.
• Work closely with the Director and Associate Legal Counsel to ensure the ERM framework reflects relevant regulatory and contractual obligations.
• Collaborate with Compliance to ensure ethical, anti-fraud, and privacy-related risks are effectively managed and tracked.
• Contribute to the development and rollout of compliance reporting tools and templates for staff and leadership.

Support ongoing Legal, Risk, and Compliance operations

• Maintain the risk register and control documentation as living tools – updating quarterly and integrating with departmental workflows.
• Prepare risk and compliance summaries for senior leadership
• Provide project-based support to Legal and Compliance teams on initiatives such as policy rollouts, contracting, governance documentation, and vendor compliance.
• Promote a culture of learning and accountability – helping teams view risk management as an enabler of effective, ethical delivery rather than a compliance burden.

Strengthen governance and cross-functional alignment

• Serve as a point of coordination between Legal & Compliance, Internal Audit, and Operations on governance and control matters.
• Facilitate consistent communication on risk themes and findings across teams.
• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of Legal & Compliance systems that underpin organizational accountability, transparency, and recipient trust.

What you’ll bring:

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
• Systems-thinking and pragmatism: You can design structures that bring clarity and consistency without adding unnecessary complexity – building systems people will actually use.
• Experience in risk, compliance, or legal operations: You’ve worked in environments where managing organizational risk and accountability mattered – ideally with exposure to enterprise risk, internal controls, legal compliance, or governance systems.
• Understanding of controls and assurance concepts: You know how risks link to controls, and how controls connect to organizational processes. You don’t need to test them (that’s Internal Audit’s role), but you can design and document them effectively.
• Cross-functional collaboration skills: You’re comfortable working with legal counsel, finance, operations, and internal audit – translating complex governance ideas into shared, actionable plans.
• Clear and concise communication: You can synthesize inputs from across the organization into structured risk summaries and governance reports for leadership.
• Judgment and discretion: You handle sensitive organizational and legal information with care, and know when to escalate or seek guidance.
• Follow-through and accountability: You turn frameworks into action – ensuring ideas become systems, and systems are maintained over time.

Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree in Law, Public Policy, Business, or related field (JD, MPA, MBA, or equivalent) strongly preferred. Equivalent professional experience in legal, compliance, or risk governance will also be considered.
• Experience: 3–5 years of relevant work experience in risk management, internal controls, audit, compliance, or governance functions.
• Experience working in nonprofit, donor-funded, or international organizations strongly preferred.
• Strong project management, stakeholder engagement, and documentation skills.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, early-stage, or cross-functional environments.
• Experience with insurance tracking, internal audits, or policy control environments is a plus.
• Language requirement: English (required).

Language preference: French or Portuguese (preferred).

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus)  falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. Read more about our compensation philosophy here.

• We’ll be updating this JD with the salary details over the next few days.

Why work at GiveDirectly?

At GiveDirectly, we work to ensure that you have everything you need to excel in your role and on your team, including:

• A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement 
• A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
• A competitive salary, including bonus
• A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
• Flexible paid time off
• Allowances for desk set-up and learning and development

 #LI-REMOTE