Marketing Risk & Control Lead
Location: London
Reporting to: Chief of Staff to CMO and Director of Marketing Operations
Closing date: Wednesday, 7th October at 5pm.
About Starling
At Starling, we are on a mission to provide people with a fairer, smarter, and more human alternative to traditional banks. We are building a leading digital bank, driven by fast technology, fair service, and honest values. Our vision is to create a banking industry that serves everyone, which we accomplish by developing best-in-class proprietary technology, offering an exceptional customer experience, and establishing a strong, sustainable business.
Our five core values – Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim for Greatness – are at the heart of everything we do, guiding our strategy and shaping our culture. We're a branchless, largely paperless bank, committed to responsible banking, sustainability, and fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.
Hybrid working: All Starling colleagues spend a minimum of 10 days per month in the office with flexibility to work the rest from home.
The Opportunity
We’re hiring a Risk and Control Lead to join our Marketing team during a pivotal new phase of growth. We are looking for an experienced leader who is responsible for establishing, overseeing, and maintaining the governance, risk, and control framework across all marketing activities. This role ensures that marketing campaigns, customer communications, brand assets, and data-driven targeting adhere to internal risk standards, regulatory mandates, and consumer duty guidelines without stifling creative velocity.
What You'll Do
- Own and operationalise tailored Risk and Control Self-Assessments (RCSA) across the marketing department.
- Conduct proactive risk assessments on new marketing initiatives, product launches, brand campaigns, and go-to-market strategies prior to release.
- Own, define and test robust First Line of Defence (1LoD) controls.
- Monitor changes in relevant laws (e.g., consumer duty, advertising standards, data privacy like GDPR/CCPA, fair treatment of customers) and embed necessary control points into marketing operations.
- Identify, log, and manage marketing incidents, operational failures, or legal/regulatory breaches; lead root-cause analysis and enforce action plans.
- Evaluate third-party advertising, media, and vendors for risk exposure, defining and implementing the necessary controls.
- Serve as the central subject matter expert (SME) advising creative, growth, and product marketing teams on compliant execution while conducting routine risk training across the marketing function.
Requirements
Essential Skills & Experience:
- 5+ years of experience in operational risk or compliance, specifically supporting marketing or brand, and ideally within financial services.
- Hands-on experience in facilitating Risk & Control Self-Assessments (RCSA), process mapping, key risk identification, and assessing residual risk levels in marketing environments.
- Deep understanding of advertising regulations (e.g., ASA, FCA guidelines), data protection laws (GDPR), and consumer duty.
- Proven track record in designing end-to-end control testing, risk mapping, and business process monitoring.
Behaviours & Competencies:
- Excellent cross-functional communicator capable of balancing regulatory rigour with commercial goals and creativity.
- Outstanding ability to break down complex, dense regulatory frameworks into pragmatic, easy-to-digest concepts that resonate with creative marketing professionals.
Benefits
Why Join Starling?
- Make an Impact: Work on projects that directly shape the future of banking and improve the financial lives of our customers. Starling is technology-led, and you'll have the freedom to accomplish your goals in innovative ways.
- Culture of Excellence: Be part of a collaborative, empowered, and forward-thinking team. We encourage experimentation, ownership, and a relentless focus on "doing the right thing.”
- Growth and Development: We are committed to your professional growth, offering opportunities to learn new technologies, take on new challenges, and own interesting things from day one.
- A Bank That Cares: We're a Living Wage employer, committed to flexible working, and dedicated to creating a fair, open, and safe working environment with compassion and inclusion at its core.
- Comprehensive Benefits: We offer a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package, including:
- Company-enhanced salary sacrifice pension scheme (7% employer contribution)
- Private Medical Insurance with Vitality including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton.
- 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
- An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
- Life Insurance at 4x your salary.
- 16 hours of paid volunteering time a year.
- Ability to buy or sell annual leave.
- Generous family-friendly policies.
- Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
- Incentivised refer a friend scheme
- Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
- Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasingOur Commitment to Equality
Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree that Starling Bank will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.
We use AI tools to support various parts of our recruitment process, helping our team manage applications and assessments more efficiently. These tools are strictly used for support and do not replace human judgment with all final hiring decisions being made by our team. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please reach out to us.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of experience in operational risk or compliance, specifically supporting marketing or brand, ideally within financial services
- Hands-on experience facilitating Risk and Control Self-Assessments, process mapping, key risk identification, and residual risk assessment
- Deep understanding of advertising regulations, including ASA and FCA guidelines
- Knowledge of data protection laws, including GDPR
- Knowledge of consumer duty requirements
- Track record designing end-to-end control testing, risk mapping, and business process monitoring
- Excellent cross-functional communication skills
- Ability to translate complex regulatory frameworks into practical guidance for marketing professionals
What We Do
Hello, we’re Starling. Banking was broken – so we decided to fix it. The vision? Fast technology, fair service and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time. We built Britain’s first digital bank. One hard-won banking licence later, we set about giving people a new way to spend, save and manage their money (and take better care of the planet, too). We’re changing banking for good. Back then, we were obsessed with unravelling the knotty world of finance and solving people’s problems rather than selling them stuff. We still are. Since then, we’ve grown. A lot. Over three million accounts (and four account types!). A team of thousands. Headquartered in London with offices in Cardiff, Dublin, Manchester and Southampton. Five years voted Which? Recommended Provider and Britain's Best Banking Brand. Still zero branches. Our culture is open, inclusive and focused on solving real customer problems, with an emphasis on doing the right thing, even when it’s not always the easy thing. From our approach to working together and sustainability to how we build our products, our decisions need to make the world – and Starling – a better place to be. Everyone at Starling is essential to our mission, which is really quite simple: to solve our customer’s problems – and build the best bank in the world! And now we're providing Starling to other banks, via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) proposition through our subsidiary Engine, using the proprietary technology platform that it uses to power our own bank.
