Risk Operations

Many banks treat Risk as a cost center - Column treats it as a competitive advantage. Our ability to take on new customers, expand into new product areas, and successfully operate under regulatory scrutiny depends entirely on the quality of our Risk programs. As we grow, the volume and complexity of that work will outpace what the team can absorb - that’s where this role comes in. This is a strategic operations role that lives inside our Risk function. It’s less about being a Risk expert and more about being an exceptional operator who is energized by learning new domains quickly, spotting inefficiencies, and building the tools to fix them. You’ll work closely with a variety of teams across Column (e.g., Engineering, People, Compliance, Legal, etc.) to figure out which processes and programs are slowing us down. By the time you’re done with a project, tasks that took days should take minutes, and you’ll have a deep understanding of what it takes to operate one of the most strategically important functions to our business. This role reports to the Head of Technology Risk and is in-person based out of our San Francisco Presidio office 3-4 days a week.

Responsibilities

Plug into whichever Risk program needs the most support at a given moment - third-party risk management, information security, model risk, privacy, financial, operational, etc. - and figure out what’s broken, slow, or missing; Learn each program from the ground up - understand what it’s actually protecting against, how it works in practice, and where the gaps are, then re-design it so it’s faster and more consistent; Build the tooling that makes the next version of a process possible - scripts, internal dashboards, AI-assisted review workflows, system integrations; Support third-party diligence and monitoring, helping assess vendor/supplier risk and turning your findings into concrete remediation steps; Help design business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) exercises that test how Column and its partners actually respond when things go wrong; Take our privacy program to the next level, and make sure privacy considerations are part of the way we diligence prospective customers from the start

Requirements

2+ years of doing something hard, in consulting, technical operations, software engineering, or any role where you had to make sense of a complex system, improve it, and get others to adopt the change; Ability to get up to speed fast; Optimization instinct and skills to build tooling to automate manual processes; Technical fluency in terminal, Python, Go, Apps Script, SQL, APIs; Strong written communication; Hyper-organized with multiple concurrent workstreams

Nice to have

Prior risk experience

Benefits

Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, including options that are 100% covered by Column for you and 100% covered for your dependents; Comprehensive family planning and fertility benefits via partnership with Carrot, including reimbursement of up to $20,000 in qualified expenses; Up to $2,000 (post-tax) monthly rent subsidy for employees living within 2 miles of Column’s office; FSA and HSA account options to enable use of pre-tax money for medical and dependent care expenses; 401k plan, including self-directed brokerage options; Flexible time-off policy; Sabbatical Program - reach your 5-year anniversary to take up to 8 weeks of fully paid leave; 100% paid parental leave, including 16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, and 8 weeks for secondary caregivers; Up to $4,500 in annual reimbursements for backup childcare; Catered lunches and dinners for SF employees; Commuter benefits, including paid transportation to-and-from the office; Regular team building events, including annual offsite