Onboarding & Risk Analyst

About Straddle
Straddle is building the trust layer for how money moves in the United States. The payments infrastructure behind $100 trillion in annual volume was designed for batch processing and banking hours. We're rebuilding it for businesses that need money to move fast and land with confidence.
Straddle is an open-banking payments platform for account-to-account money movement. One API combines identity verification, fraud detection, and payments across ACH and RTP, with FedNow coming soon, so businesses can move money between bank accounts as easily as sending a text.

About the role

The Onboarding & Risk Analyst is a full-time hybrid salary position + full health benefits, unlimited PTO, & 401k.

The ORA decides which businesses can move money on Straddle. You will review new merchant and platform applications, determine whether each one fits our risk appetite and sponsor bank requirements, and document your decision so it holds up in an audit. You will work closely with our Risk Lead and Head of Compliance and escalate to them as needed.

Day to day, you will work the onboarding queue. That means running KYB and KYC CDD reviews, verifying business entities and beneficial owners, screening for sanctions and adverse media, and checking each applicant's business model, flow of funds, and website against what they told us.

We are preparing for a major go-to-market push and expect application volume to rise sharply. Your job is to help us approve good businesses quickly and keep the wrong ones off, without lowering our standards. You will also help refine our review criteria, risk tiers, and SOPs as volume grows.

We're looking for strong analytical and communication skills, sound judgment, and a working knowledge of KYB/KYC and BSA/AML, or the drive to learn them quickly.

What you'll do

• Onboarding Reviews – Review new merchant and platform applications end to end. Verify business entities, beneficial ownership, and principals, and confirm each applicant has cleared the required KYB/KYC checks before going live.
• Risk Assessment & Classification – Evaluate each applicant's business model, industry, MCC, and flow of funds to assign the right risk tier. Identify when a business needs licensing, such as money transmission, lending, or earned wage access, and when a business falls outside our risk appetite.
• Enhanced Due Diligence – Run EDD on higher-risk applicants. Review terms of service, privacy policies, marketing, and entity documents against what the applicant told us, and flag any inconsistencies. Draft clear, specific follow-up requests to applicants and partners.
• Sanctions, Watchlist & Adverse Media Screening – Review screening results for businesses and their principals. Resolve false positives with documented rationale, and escalate true matches promptly and in full.
• Decisioning & Documentation – Make and document approve, conditional-approve, and decline recommendations. Write each decision so a sponsor bank, auditor, or examiner can follow your reasoning without asking you a question.
• Limits & Ongoing Monitoring – Recommend initial transaction limits based on expected volume and risk profile. Support periodic re-reviews of existing merchants when their activity, return rates, or business model changes.
• Queue Management & SLAs – Own the onboarding pipeline during a high-volume launch period. Prioritize well, keep applications from stalling, and communicate status clearly to Sales, Customer Success, and applicants.
• Onboarding & Risk Support – Support the Risk Lead and the broader compliance team across onboarding and risk work. Answer applicant and partner questions about requirements, help with escalated or complex cases, and take on ad hoc risk reviews and projects as priorities shift.
• Process & Policy Improvement – Help refine onboarding SOPs, risk-tiering criteria, and review checklists as volume grows. Spot repeat patterns and suggest ways to automate or streamline reviews without lowering the bar.
• Bank Partner & Audit Support – Prepare due diligence packages and evidence for sponsor bank reviews, audits, and exams, as directed by the Risk Lead and Head of Compliance.

Qualifications

• Professional Experience – 1 to 3 years of experience in KYB/KYC onboarding, merchant underwriting, risk operations, compliance, or payment operations. Ideally at a fintech, bank, or payments company where the work had real regulatory stakes.
• Analytical Judgment – You can read a business's website, documents, and application and tell whether the story holds together. You catch mismatches between what a business says it does and what it actually does, and you ask when something doesn't add up.
• Written Communication – You write concise, well-supported risk decisions and clear requests for information. Your documentation stands on its own.
• Comfort with Volume – You work methodically through a busy queue without cutting corners. You know which applications need a fast yes and which need a closer look.
• Startup Readiness – You are comfortable with ambiguity in a small, fast-moving company. You can hold multiple workstreams at once, make calls with incomplete information, and know when to escalate.
• Integrity and Discretion – You bring high integrity and sound judgment to sensitive information. You will see personal identifying information, business financials, and compliance case files daily. Confidentiality and professional conduct are non-negotiable.

• High-Risk Industry Experience – Experience underwriting or reviewing higher-risk verticals such as lending, earned wage access, marketplaces, P2P, or regulated goods.
• Payments and Regulatory Exposure – Familiarity with ACH, Nacha Operating Rules, BSA/AML, CIP and beneficial ownership requirements, OFAC, and state money transmission licensing.
• Sponsor Bank Experience – Experience working within bank-partner programs and their due diligence requirements.
• Certification Interest – Interest in or progress toward CAMS, CAFS, CAFCA, or similar industry certifications. We support continuing education.
• Tool Familiarity – Experience with Plain, Linear, Notion, or Salesforce is helpful but not required.
• AI-Augmented Work – Experience using AI tools to improve review quality or throughput. We are a technology company and expect our team to use the best tools available.