Head of Trust & Risk Operations at Yoco

About the role

• We're looking for a seasoned leader to head up Trust & Risk Operations - the team that protects and scales trust within Yoco’s ecosystem.
• You’ll lead first-line operational controls for merchant onboarding, usage, payouts, disputes, and fraud investigations - turning risk appetite and policies into fast, accurate, and low-friction systems that scale with Yoco’s growth.
• Operating as the first line of defence, you’ll ensure control effectiveness, evidence assurance, and operational excellence in close partnership with Risk, Compliance and Product.
• You’ll build systems and teams that keep merchants safe and successful - reducing losses without blocking growth, and ensuring trust scales alongside merchant confidence.

What you will be doing

• Lead and scale Trust & Risk Operations across KYC, AML, fraud, disputes, and risk escalations
• Build and empower high-performing teams with deep investigative skills and controls capability
• Translate risk appetite and policies into evidenced, first-line systems and playbooks
• Design & run merchant lifecycle controls: onboarding, payouts, collections, complaints-risk
• Oversee investigations and incident response, ensuring root-cause analysis, and upstream fixes across the ecosystem
• Partner closely with second-line teams on control assurance and governance
• Own risk signal intelligence and drive control improvements across Product, and Ops
• Champion automation, tooling, and process design that makes trust scalable
• Represent Trust & Risk Ops in governance forums and with external partners (e.g. regulators)

About you

• 8–12 years’ experience in Risk, Trust, or AML operations, including 4–5 years in senior leadership roles
• Proven ability to build and scale systems, teams, and controls in high-complexity environments
• Deep operational expertise in fraud, CDD, AML, chargebacks, and dispute management
• Experienced in operating as the first line of defence, ensuring effective controls and credible assurance outcomes
• Skilled in working across Risk, Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Customer Operations to balance growth and integrity
• Data-driven and automation-minded - you use insight and systems to strengthen control effectiveness and efficiency
• Calm under pressure, structured in ambiguity, and trusted by senior stakeholders, regulators, and partners
• Purpose-driven and commercially minded, you see trust & risk ops as an enabler of sustainable growth