Head of Risk and Money Services

Skills this role screens for

About the role

About Gusto

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.

Head of Risk & Money Services

At Gusto, we help more than 500,000 small businesses create great places to work for their people. We do this through modern payroll, employee benefits, expert HR, and financial services.

We are searching for a seasoned financial services operator and regulated-domain leader to own one of Gusto's most consequential customer-facing functions: Risk & Money Services. This role sits within CX and Gusto's Financial Services organization and reports directly to the Head of Financial Services.

Every dollar that moves through Gusto's platform — payroll being delivered on time, wages being deposited into Gusto Wallet, cash advances being issued, disputes being resolved — carries real financial and regulatory weight. Risk & Money Services is the team that protects this trust at the most critical edges of money movement: fraud and payment risk decisioning, Reg E dispute operations, collections, and the consumer money products that sit at the intersection of and its small business mission.

Also

This function spans three interconnected practices

You will lead this organization through a senior leadership team, who carry full ownership for their function's outcomes, not just execution within it.Partner deeply with Compliance, Legal, Engineering, and Product across Gusto's products, and serve as the operational owner of the functions that sit at the regulated edge of Gusto's financial platform

This is a builder's role. Risk & Money Services is being stood up as a defined function within a new domain — you will set the SLAs, design the controls, build the metrics framework, establish the governance, and create the playbook that lets Gusto move money with confidence and scale.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That's why we're committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually.

• Risk Operations — fraud ops, account takeover detection, payment-risk decisioning, and collections across both employer and employee money movement. This team makes real-time, high-stakes decisions on whether payroll goes out when something looks wrong, BSA/AML compliance, whether a fund recovery effort can be executed in time, and whether a fraud signal warrants action. The financial impact of individual calls is material. Focusing on risk mitigation and exceptional service is no easy task
• Dispute Operations — Reg E dispute processing across Gusto's banking and money-movement products, from intake through resolution and provisional credit decisioning. This team owns Gusto's most regulated customer-facing process and operates at the intersection of customer trust and regulatory obligation.
• Money Services and Banking — the operational home for Gusto Wallet, Cash Advance, and Gusto's expanding consumer financial products. This team is responsible for building the operational infrastructure that supports Gusto's growth in consumer banking — while protecting the customers who depend on it.

The work

Here's what you'll do

• Own Risk & Money Services end to end. Be the single accountable leader for fraud and payment risk decisioning, BSA/AML compliance, Reg E dispute operations, collections, and the operational backbone of Gusto's money products. Own the customer experience, the regulatory posture, and the financial outcomes across this entire function.
• Lead a multi-disciplinary regulated financial services organization through leaders who lead. Direct an organization spanning risk operations, dispute and fraud operations, and consumer money — through leaders who own their function end to end, whom you'll continue to develop, hire, and scale. Be the keeper of quality, speed, and regulatory integrity across all three practices.
• Stand up Risk & Money Services as a defined operational function. Define the governance, the metrics framework, the SLAs, and the reporting infrastructure for a function that is being formalized for the first time. Build the operating muscle — controls documentation, audit readiness, workforce management, and escalation frameworks — that makes this domain run with the reliability a regulated function requires.
• Own the highest-stakes real-time financial decisions in Gusto's customer operations. Be accountable for the decisions your team makes every day on whether payroll goes out when something looks wrong, whether a dispute warrants provisional credit, whether a fraud signal warrants action, and whether a fund recovery effort can be executed in time. These decisions carry material financial impact for customers and for Gusto — and they happen in real time.
• Own Gusto's Reg E compliance posture at the operational level. Lead the operational program that governs Gusto's Reg E dispute obligations — intake, investigation, provisional credit, resolution, and customer communication — in partnership with Compliance and Legal. Ensure the team's practices are auditable, scalable, and consistently defensible.
• Lead BSA/AML operational response. Own the customer-facing operational work triggered by BSA/AML alert activity — transaction monitoring response, customer outreach, account action — in partnership with Gusto's Compliance program. Ensure operational response meets the timeliness and documentation standards required by Gusto's sponsor bank relationships and regulatory obligations.
• Build Consumer Money for growth. Own the operational infrastructure for Gusto Wallet, Cash Advance, and Gusto's expanding consumer financial product suite. Build the SOPs, workforce model, controls, and SLAs that support consumer product growth while protecting the customers who depend on these products.
• Drive AI-native transformation in a regulated financial domain. Partner with Gusto's shared service platform and AI organization to bring AI agents, semantic knowledge, and automation capabilities into Risk & Money Services — accelerating fraud decisioning speed, dispute throughput, and risk signal accuracy while protecting the regulatory accountability this domain requires.
• Be the operational counterpart to Product, Engineering, and Risk partners. Operate as the direct customer experience and operational owner across Gusto's money and risk product organizations — translating the operational and regulatory reality of risk and money movement into product priorities, and translating product roadmap into operational and regulatory readiness.
• Represent Risk & Money Services externally. Be the direct voice with Gusto's sponsor bank partners, regulators, and auditors on matters affecting risk and money movement — not just the internal operator of the controls they require, but the leader they know and deal with directly.
• Build the playbook for new financial products.…