Risk & Controls Manager

Pleo · London, England

ABOUT PLEO

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’.

The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're looking for a Risk and Controls Manager to join our Risk & Controls team, part of Pleo's Second Line of Defence. You'll report to our Head of Risk and Controls, helping build and run our enterprise risk management framework, from risk appetite linkage through to the risk reporting our senior leaders and committees rely on. Alongside that full ERM remit, you'll own second line oversight of security, technology and operational resilience risk, giving our technology and security teams informed, credible challenge. It's a rare mix: a broad enterprise risk role with a technology risk specialism, in a FinTech that's still shaping how it manages risk as it scales. We value people from a range of risk backgrounds, so if you match most of what's below, we'd love to hear from you.

WHO YOU'LL BE WORKING WITH AND REPORTING TO

You'll work closely with other members in our Risk and Controls team, the security GRC team in the First Line, as well as teams across Product, Engineering, Operations, Finance and Compliance.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

As a Risk Manager, you will:

Right now we're broadening what the team covers. We already have strong financial and credit risk skills in the team. This hire closes our gap in technology risk and gives us a second person who can run enterprise risk management end to end. You'll work across a risk universe that spans technology, information security, privacy and operational resilience, alongside product, operational and financial risk.

WHAT YOU BRING

YOU’LL THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU HAVE:

Nice to have:

HOW YOU’LL DEVELOP IN THIS ROLE
IN YOUR FIRST 12 MONTHS AT PLEO, YOU’LL:

We're committed to helping you grow here, whether that means deepening your technical expertise, expanding your regulatory knowledge, or stepping into broader leadership responsibilities as the team develops.

WHY IS THIS ROLE A GOOD FIT FOR YOU

This role is a good fit for you if:

This role is not a good fit for you if:

HOW YOU'LL DEVELOP IN THIS ROLE

In your first 12 months at Pleo, you'll:

As deputy to the head of the function, you'll get broad exposure to senior stakeholders and governance, with room to grow into wider leadership as the team develops.

THE INTERVIEW PROCESS

We want to ensure you are set-up for success and understand what will be expected of you. If your application is successful, our interview process is as follows:

SHOW ME THE BENEFITS!

Transparency is important to us so we also wanted to share some insights about what we're looking for in applications to ensure you can set yourself up for success!

Last time we hired a Risk Manager, we received a lot of applications but only meet with a select few. With this in mind, we want to help you understand what we really care about when reviewing your application:

We receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated. We love seeing people leverage AI—it's a big focus for us internally too—but without human intervention, these CVs can sometimes become generic and fail to show a candidate in the best light. What we're really looking for is the specific details of real impact that only you—not AI—know from your previous experience. A top tip from us is to use the "Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z" formula (credit: Laszlo Bock, ~2014) to give a really clear picture of what you've worked on. A final note: including links to your previous companies' websites is a huge help and allows us to truly understand your background.

Every single application we receive is reviewed by a human (yes, hundreds of them) because we believe that candidates' efforts should be matched by an equal level of human care. This means that we expect a similar level of attention put into your application. Read and answer the application questions carefully, they make a huge difference in our decision-making process.

ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION

Apply on Pleo's site