Head of User Risk Strategy

Strategy & Vision

• Own the long-term vision and strategy for Stripe's User Risk / Supportability function, ensuring legitimate users can use Stripe while protecting Stripe's financial platform, brand, and regulatory standing.
• Translate Stripe's business objectives and risk appetite into a cohesive, multi-year supportability strategy that balances risk exposure with user experience.
• Define the risk/reward framework for new industry enablement and new product enablement — setting the standard for how Stripe evaluates and expands access responsibly.
• Develop and execute a clear roadmap across the URS organization that is aligned to Stripe's SOKRs and articulated to senior leadership.

Ecosystem Strategy

• Own Stripe's global Terms of Service standards — the Supportability Handling Guide — including restricted and prohibited business categories.
• Set the strategic direction for how Stripe's supportability ecosystem evolves as Stripe's product footprint and geographic reach expand.
• Be the final decision-maker on policy changes that carry meaningful risk exposure or require cross-functional alignment, and represent Risk's position with Legal, FinCRO, card networks, and external partners.
• Integrate financial partner Restricted/Prohibited Business Lists (RBL/PBL) into Stripe's policy framework.

New Product Enablement

• Lead the strategy and approval process for new product enablement — developing the appropriate RBL/PBL strategy for new products and incorporating new bank partner requirements.
• Ensure that risk standards are embedded early in the product development lifecycle, partnering with Product and Engineering to shape how supportability is implemented in new Stripe products.
• Work with Legal and Financial Partnerships to assess and integrate compliance obligations introduced by new products and banking relationships.

User Insights & Enablement

• Lead the strategy for new industry enablement — evaluating emerging and underserved industries for supportability, and developing the frameworks that allow Stripe to access these markets responsibly.
• Own the Large User Advisory function, providing structured, high-quality guidance on complex user-specific supportability questions — enabling GTM and Partnerships to unlock revenue while managing risk appropriately.
• Develop scalable frameworks for advisory decisions so the function can handle growing volume without compromising quality.

Platform Risk Strategy

• Lead Platform Risk Strategy, which covers large user requests, health monitoring, and education for Stripe's largest and most complex users.
• Develop scalable approaches to managing the supportability risk profile of Stripe's largest platforms and complex use cases, providing clear guidance and risk frameworks to internal stakeholders.
• Drive education and self-service capabilities so that internal teams and users can navigate Stripe's supportability standards more independently.

Enforcement & Monitoring Strategy (EMS)

• Provide strategic direction to the EMS team, which is responsible for integrating Stripe's supportability standards into detection and enforcement systems.
• Ensure that URS standards are operable, enforceable, and continuously tuned based on performance data and insights.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Data Science to develop data-driven detection strategies, improve enforcement precision, and reduce false positives that create unnecessary user friction.
• Maintain global EMS coverage, including regional strategy across North America and EMEA/APAC.

People & Organizational Leadership

• Lead and develop a team across five sub-teams, including multiple team-level managers (M0/M1) and senior individual contributors.
• Set a high bar for talent and actively recruit, develop, and retain excellent risk strategists.
• Build a team culture grounded in Stripe's Operating Principles — one that is analytically rigorous, user-centric, and collaborative.
• Coach and develop your direct reports to grow in both their functional craft and their leadership capabilities.
• Build succession depth and develop a clear talent strategy for the function.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Act as the senior Risk Strategy voice in cross-functional risk forums, product reviews, and partner negotiations relevant to supportability.
• Partner with Product and Engineering on the Supportability platform, influencing the roadmap to ensure our systems accurately reflect policy intent and scale effectively.
• Work with GTM and Partnerships to develop scalable access to supportability information, reducing friction in the sales cycle while maintaining risk discipline.
• Engage with Legal and Financial Partnerships on policy positions, regulatory changes, and external partner requirements.
• Represent URS at senior Risk leadership reviews and provide clear, data-backed narrative on the state of the supportability ecosystem.
• Drive cross-functional programs with impacts across Risk and the broader organization — including Third Party Agent (TPA) programs, Actor-Level Enforcement, and strategic GTM/URS collaboration initiatives — ensuring clear goals, DRIs, and measurable outcomes.

Minimum Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in risk strategy, policy, compliance, or a related field, with deep experience in user/merchant risk, supportability, or financial services regulation.
• 4+ years of people management experience, including managing managers; demonstrated ability to lead through multiple layers of an organization.
• Proven track record of owning and evolving complex policy or standards frameworks at scale, ideally within a payments, fintech, or marketplace context.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver at scale — you have built systems, frameworks, and teams that operate well beyond individual effort, and you instinctively design for leverage and repeatability across large, complex organizations.
• Champion for AI and automation — you actively seek opportunities to apply AI-powered tooling and automation to accelerate risk strategy work, reduce manual toil, and improve the quality and consistency of decisions at scale; you set the example for your team in adopting and driving these capabilities.
• Exceptional cross-functional collaborator — you know how to build trust with Legal, Engineering, Product, Sales, and Operations, and can reconcile competing stakeholder views to drive results.
• Analytical rigor — you are comfortable with data and can structure risk/reward trade-offs clearly and compellingly for senior audiences.
• Executive presence and clear written and verbal communication — you can distill complex risk topics into actionable narratives for leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with card network rules (Visa, Mastercard), financial partner compliance requirements, or regulatory frameworks relevant to payments (e.g., BIN sponsorship, direct acquiring).
• Familiarity with supportability or trust & safety systems, detection and enforcement tooling, or risk policy automation.
• Experience in a high-growth technology company managing risk at scale.