Senior Director, Payments Risk

Want to help us help others? We’re hiring! 

GoFundMe is the world’s most powerful community for good, dedicated to helping people help each other. By uniting individuals and nonprofits in one place, GoFundMe makes it easy and safe for people to ask for help and support causes—for themselves and each other. Together, our community has raised more than $40 billion since 2010.

Join us! 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.

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. 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.

The Job

Strategic Leadership & Risk Governance

• 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.

Operational Excellence & Loss Prevention

• 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.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Communication

• 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.

Team Leadership, Culture & Development

• 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.

Data, Tooling & Reporting

• 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.

You

• 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.

Why you’ll love it here

• Make an Impact: Be part of a mission-driven organization making a positive difference in millions of lives every year.
• Innovative Environment: Work with a diverse, passionate, and talented team in a fast-paced, forward-thinking atmosphere.
• Collaborative Team: Join a fun and collaborative team that works hard and celebrates success together.
• Competitive Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay and comprehensive healthcare benefits.
• Holistic Support: Enjoy financial assistance for things like hybrid work, family planning, along with generous parental leave, flexible time-off policies, and mental health and wellness resources to support your overall well-being.
• Growth Opportunities: Participate in learning, development, and recognition programs to help you thrive and grow.
• Commitment to DEI: Contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through ongoing initiatives and employee resource groups.
• Community Engagement: Make a difference through our volunteering program.

We live by our core values: impatient to be great, find a way, earn trust every day, fueled by purpose. Be a part of something bigger with us!

GoFundMe is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that actively pursues candidates of diverse backgrounds and experiences.  We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, marital status, age, medical condition, mental or physical disability, or military or veteran status.

The total annual base salary for this full-time position is $180,500 - $270,500 + bonus + equity + benefits.  As this is a remote position, the salary range was determined by role, level, and possible location across the US. Individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range based on your location during the hiring process. 

If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete a job application or a job interview or to otherwise participate in the hiring process, please contact us at accommodationrequests@gofundme.com. 

Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants:

Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or certain US privacy laws may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. 

Learn more about GoFundMe:

We’re proud to partner with GoFundMe.org, an independent public charity, to extend the reach and impact of our generous community, while helping drive critical social change. You can learn more about GoFundMe.org’s activities and impact in their FY ‘25 annual report.

Our annual “Year in Help” report reflects our community’s impact in advancing our mission of helping people help each other.

For recent company news and announcements, visit our Newsroom.

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