Senior Risk Strategist - Onboarding Experience

About Mercury Mercury is building a complete finance stack for startups. We work hard to create the easiest and safest banking* experience possible to simplify entrepreneurs' and business owners’ financial lives. To deliver this stellar experience, we must understand our customers deeply from onboarding through every interaction they have with our product. We are seeking a highly independent and data-savvy strategist to lead and optimize the user experience within our risk onboarding program.

Risk Strategy is a hybrid team deeply focused on data analytics and risk thought leadership (i.e., strategy) within Mercury. This team identifies, assesses, and proactively mitigates the financial, regulatory, and reputational risks faced by Mercury via data-driven analytics and product/process improvement while maintaining a stellar experience for our customers that fosters trust in our platform.

*Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC.

About the Role As a Senior Risk Strategist focused on Onboarding Experience, you will play a critical role in shaping how new users experience Mercury while navigating complex trade-offs between user experience and risk management. You will lead efforts to monitor, analyze, and improve the onboarding journey end-to-end - owning metrics like follow-up rates, rejection rates, and time-to-decision, while incorporating automation and reducing friction.

To start, this role is focused on solving short-term challenges with immediate impact, improving the onboarding journey by identifying actionable insights through data. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to balance customer experience improvements with compliance standards. Eventually, you’ll form the strategy for how we make these tradeoffs in the future and will define operating norms that will scale as Mercury grows.

As part of the journey, we would expect you to:

• Partner directly with Risk, Growth, and Conversion product teams to deliver an onboarding process that balances user experience with robust risk controls

• Use SQL and data analysis to monitor user behavior and process metrics, identifying and executing quick-win opportunities to enhance the onboarding process without compromising risk and compliance standing

• Develop and execute strategies to minimize friction in the onboarding process, reduce dropoff rates, and enhance automation capabilities; work collaboratively with stakeholders to address immediate friction points while balancing longer-term strategic objectives

• Act as a thought leader in meetings with executive leadership, advocating for data-driven decisions and delivering a clear vision for onboarding optimization

• Collaborate across Risk, Product, Compliance, Legal, and Engineering teams to ensure solutions align with regulatory standards and customer expectations

• Build and maintain dashboards or monitoring systems to provide visibility into key metrics and drive continuous improvement

There are lots of paths that could lead you to be successful in a role like this; we think the strongest candidates will have some of this experience:

• Experience: 6+ years of experience in an analytical role, including 3+ years in risk, financial services/fintech, trust and safety, or a related field; bonus if it’s in a startup environment

• Technical Skills: Strong proficiency in SQL and data visualization tools; ability to leverage data to drive strategy and action; experience working with event-level data, including funnel analysis, optimization strategies, and troubleshooting user flow issues

• Experimentation Ability: Familiarity with A/B testing frameworks, including statistical evaluation and application to real-world product improvements

• Independence: Self-starter capable of leading initiatives with minimal oversight, managing ambiguity, and delivering results

• Communication: Confident in presenting to senior executives and adept at influencing cross-functional stakeholders

• Problem-Solving: A curiosity-driven mindset with a track record of building scalable solutions to complex challenges

• Customer-Centric: Passionate about creating seamless user experiences while maintaining a strong risk appetite

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options), and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees (any location) : $203,100 - $238,900

• Canadian employees (any location): CAD $184,800 - $217,400

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

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