Lead Analyst - Payment Operations Risk

Company Description

Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money. Min fees. Max ease. Full speed. Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money. As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money. For everyone, everywhere.

Job Description

More about our mission and what we offer. We are looking for a Lead Payment Operations Analyst who is passionate about our mission of Money Without Borders. You will partner with our Payment Operations organisation to help drive data‑driven decisions that evaluate the current risks the organisation faces, interpret risk appetite and monitor and control for these risks. The Payment Operations organisation is responsible for ensuring that our customers’ payments flow smoothly, resolving issues surrounding the movement of funds to deliver a fast and convenient payment experience for our customers.

As a Lead Payment Operations Analyst, you will be driving our analytics effort to strengthen our risk frameworks. You will own the analytics strategy and models behind our Key Risk Indicator framework, design risk thresholds that support the organisation’s risk appetite and build control assurance models around our risky payment processing flows. You will also own the data behind the reconciliation of bank balances and customer funds to ensure that there are no material financial discrepancies. You will own the relationship with our Risk partners in the organisation. This is a great opportunity for an analyst who has a keen understanding of risks, strong product thinking and is passionate about creating convincing analyses. You will also be part of a wider team of 150+ analysts that you can collaborate with on cross‑team projects, have knowledge sharing sessions and bring ideas on how we can improve analytics across Wise.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Collaborate with various senior stakeholders in the organisation and effectively communicate insights into real change for our customers.
• Support the organisation’s drive to stay ahead of potential risks by proactively identifying them, analysing the impact of these risks and proposing appropriate risk metrics to monitor and eventually manage these risks.
• Proactively contribute to, own, create and track key metrics and results for the organisation, keeping them accountable throughout the quarter.
• Work with internal and external auditors, risk partners and stakeholders to test the effectiveness of existing controls, communicating effectively with multiple stakeholders.
• Play a pivotal role in the prevention of financial losses and staying compliant through proactive identification of emerging data trends and insights.
• Support the organisation by building and maintaining high quality data pipelines, preparing accurate reports, creating visualisations and delivering engaging presentations to expose insights in a meaningful and actionable way.

Qualifications

• Experience with SQL and building data pipelines (dbt experience is preferable). Ability to work with complex data models and independently design and implement new models.
• Strong quantitative skills, preferably with a background in statistics, mathematics, physics, engineering, analytics, computing or other scientific disciplines.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to translate business insights into persuasive analytical narratives that are simple to understand and drive customer impact.
• Ability to structure business problems with minimal supervision and prioritise issues collaboratively with stakeholders. Ownership of impact on customers.
• Proactive approach, going beyond analysis to get things done.
• Experience with data visualisation tools (Looker, PowerBI, Tableau, etc.) and confident storytelling ability with data.

Nice To Have But Not Essential

• Fintech experience, specifically in the payments space (domestic, cross‑border, cards, etc).
• Experience working in risk analytics, control assurance or operational analytics.
• Experience with user‑facing products and data.
• Python.

Additional Information

We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive. We are proud to have a truly international team and celebrate our differences. Inclusive teams help us live our values and ensure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.