About Highnote 

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an all in one card issuer processor and program management platform. We give digital-first organizations the flexibility to easily issue and process payment cards that accelerate business growth and profitability. 

We’ve raised $104M and grown our team to 100 employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we’ve managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 22 US states. 

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we’re helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don’t exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we’re unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.

The Opportunity: 

Highnote is looking for a Risk Underwriting Lead to join our risk operations efforts. This is an opportunity to bring your prior experience and tool kit to an early stage company where you will work with support, compliance, and product leadership to help build our acquiring risk operations from the ground up. Ideal candidates will have similar experience in ambiguous environments fulfilling a variety of roles, along with a knowledge of merchant acquiring, USA PATRIOT Act, OFAC, BSA/Anti-Money Laundering principles, Know Your Business and Know Your Customer processes, fraud investigations, and regulatory requirements for bank, card networks, NACHA, or similar industries.

What you’ll be doing:

• Assist the Risk Director in building the acquiring solution by writing underwriting procedures; identify and to implement new and/or enhanced practices as needed.
• Design and document policies and processes, boarding, and other special setups or tasks.
• Serve as point person for cross functional work with Product, Engineering, and Sales teams.
• Work with the Risk Director as a key contributor to internal and external audits.
• Underwrite new merchant account applications in accordance with company standards.
• Conduct periodic reviews to ensure that potential quality issues are identified adequately and addressed proactively.
• Assess ongoing risk and due diligence needs for newly onboarded customers abiding by enterprise policies.
• Analyze reserve/holdback requirements and take swift action to mitigate financial risk for at-risk accounts.
• Analyze transaction data to identify fraud, credit, and compliance risks and perform risk mitigating actions where appropriate.
• Investigate and complete comprehensive due diligence on accounts that flag in transaction monitoring, chargeback activity, AML, fraud, and sanctions reports.
• Document risk decisions with supporting evidence and capture risk mitigation actions taken.
• Accurately complete referrals for Suspicious Activity Reporting.
• Defining and adapting risk approaches to ever-evolving trends in order to protect the company against risk posed by operations and merchant activity.

Basic Qualifications:

• 10-15 years of experience on a risk team with a focus on merchant account underwriting, BSA/AML principles, fraud investigations, and suspicious activity reporting. 
• Strong understanding of merchant underwriting best practices including KYC, KYB, AML and OFAC requirements.
• Familiar with card brands, NACHA, and compliance regulations applicable to sponsored direct merchant accounts and Payment Facilitators.
• Awareness of compliance obligations for merchant acquiring platforms.

Bonus Qualifications:

• CAMS, CFE, and/or CFCS certification
• Experience in working in risk at a merchant acquiring: direct to merchant or PayFac
• Successful under pressure and with shortened deadlines
• Demonstrated success developing inventive solutions to complex problems
• Experience presenting to and collaborating with executive teams
• Analytical mindset with an independent critical investigative approach to problem solving

Why Highnote?

• We’re an early stage startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization. 
• We’re a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the fintech world, some of us don’t. We value the varied backgrounds and the diverse perspectives of our employees. 
• We’re small on hierarchy and big on growth. We’re a flat organization that allows everyone to have direct exposure to our leadership team. We are looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity. 
• We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, and XYZ Ventures. Angel Investors include Bill Ready (CEO at Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder & CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote benefits

• Flexible time off (unlimited PTO)
• 100% healthcare coverage 75% coverage for dependents
• 401k program
• Up to 16 weeks off for Maternity leave up to 6 weeks of Paternity leave
• Equity in Highnote
• Stipend to build out your home office; internet reimbursement
• At Highnote we have built a total rewards philosophy that includes fair, equitable, geo-based compensation that is performance and potential based. Our compensation packages are competitive based on robust market research and are a combination of a cash salary, equity, and benefits. In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the annual salary range for applicants is $115,000-165,000.

Please note that positions located in San Francisco are hybrid and include core working days of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in office. 

Highnote is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people from all backgrounds and identities to apply. We do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by US federal state or local laws, or the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e.: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).