VP Global Operations

Tensec is the AI-native platform that enables trade companies, including importers, exporters, logistics firms, and distributors, to give their finance and treasury teams everything they need in one place: cross-border payments, FX, treasury management, and (soon) trade finance. Fully built digital experience and dashboard. No technical integration required. No build required. Tensec delivers the complete platform and our clients simply login.

Founded in 2023, Tensec is a global fintech that enables small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to enter global trade and thrive by giving them access to global transaction banking solutions that are user-friendly, efficient, and secure.

Tensec founders have driven startups from foundation to exit, built decacorns, and led global teams at companies such as PayPal, Credit Karma, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. We’re putting together a world-class team to disrupt the $50 trillion cross-border b2b financial services industry by providing SMBs the financial strength to participate and win in the global economy.

The Tensec team is diverse and global, with members in San Francisco, New York, Miami, Monterrey, and Sao Paulo. We are funded by top venture capital firms such as Quiet Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Clocktower, WillowTree, and prolific angels such as Jason Pate (Chief Strategy Officer, Plaid), Bora Chung (ex-Chief Experience Officer, Bill.com and Board Member, Remitly).

We move fast, debrief quickly, and expect you to own your output. This is a dynamic company, we value speed and decisiveness over process. You'll have the context you need to make good decisions, and the autonomy to make them.

We believe that successful companies and teams are directly correlated to a company's cultural DNA. At Tensec, we make a deliberate effort to create values and foster a culture able to unleash both human and organizational potential. We strongly believe that the best business results derive from teams that have a strong identification with a mission, push themselves to the edge, and love what they do.

Why This Role Exists

Tensec is moving from three markets to many. We operate across the US, Mexico, and Brazil today and are expanding into Asia and the EU. We have financial partnerships powering our Asia and EU corridors today. Building the proprietary orchestration layer that sits above them, giving Tensec the flexibility to operate across any rail and in any market on our own terms, is one of the most important things we will do in the next two years.

We are looking for someone who makes things happen. Reporting into our COO and co-founder you will define and execute strategy with precision, own the outcomes, and build the institutional infrastructure that lets Tensec scale without breaking. That is not a supporting role. That is the most consequential operational role in the company today. On top of that, you will help build the treasury backend that powers real-time money movement on stablecoin rails, own the US market buildout heading into H2 2026, and as we expand into trade finance, serve as the legal and operational architect of an increasingly complex platform.

What You'll Own

The distinction between execution and strategy at Tensec is not a hierarchy of importance. It is a division of focus. You own the operational machine. The COO owns the institutional direction, relations with investors and banking partners and future initiatives.

1. Operational Leadership

• Serve as the first point of contact for day-to-day operational, legal, and cross-functional questions from the CMO, CPO, and the senior layers under the country management teams.

• Advise the product team on operational and legal requirements for the client onboarding experience. Coordinate legal review of onboarding flows and ensure the backend operations organization can deliver what the frontend promises. Product owns the design; you own the backend operational capability.

• Ensure the operations organization provides the support the PMO function requires to execute cross-functional initiatives. PMO and tech enablement ownership sits at COO level.

• As Tensec's operations become increasingly AI-assisted, ensure the operational tools your team relies on are deployed responsibly and that AI-generated outputs are used appropriately across client-facing and internal workflows.

2. Treasury Backend Infrastructure

• Build the proprietary orchestration layer that sits above our existing vendor infrastructure, giving Tensec the flexibility to operate across any rail and in any market on our own terms.

• Manage and expand our vendor network, including existing infrastructure partners powering our Asia and EU corridors. Evaluate, negotiate, and onboard new partners as we enter additional markets.

• Work with engineering and product to develop and continuously improve the orchestration technology that makes Tensec's treasury function intelligent, automated, and scalable across all corridors.

• Work closely with the treasury and finance teams to ensure the operational and technical foundation you build serves their needs effectively.

• Advise on the requirements for the risk framework governing treasury operations, ensuring the infrastructure you build is designed to support risk program ownership rather than replace it.

• Ensure the treasury infrastructure is legally sound across all operating jurisdictions, in coordination with local counsel.

3. US Market Buildout

• Own the operational and legal groundwork for existing licenses and partnerships, and US market entry, targeted for H2 2026.

• Identify and manage the regulatory, banking, and operational dependencies that make a US launch clean and defensible, including all associated marketing reviews.

• As the US ops function formalizes, hire and lead the US operations lead who runs market execution on the ground.

• The US regulatory landscape for AI in financial services is evolving rapidly across federal and state levels. Monitor and advise on the AI governance requirements that will apply to Tensec's US operations and ensure US market entry accounts for emerging AI transparency and accountability obligations.

4. Compliance Advisory

• Inform the CCO organization on US and cross-jurisdictional legal requirements that affect how the compliance program must be structured. You are the legal input, not the compliance owner.

• Advise strategically on compliance program design across markets, translating regulatory developments across BSA/AML, FinCEN, OFAC, and sanctions into actionable guidance for the compliance team.

• Compliance program ownership and external compliance advisory relationships sit at COO level; your role is to ensure the compliance team has the legal substance they need to execute well

5. Legal Affairs

• Serve as Tensec's primary internal legal voice across all US matters: corporate (other than board matters), contractual, marketing, regulatory, and risk.

• Direct and coordinate our existing legal network.

• Manage MTL obligations and monitor the regulatory landscape as we expand into new corridors.

• Lead legal review on all client agreements, vendor contracts, and external partnerships. Legal input on banking and financing relationships flows through you, with relationship ownership at COO level.

• Build the legal infrastructure, including templates, playbooks, and review processes, that scales and that the GC/CLO will inherit.

• Serve as the internal legal resource for all People & HR matters across all three jurisdictions.

Who You Are

• A builder. You are energized by the absence of a playbook, not slowed down by it. You figure things out and move.

• Intellectually honest and relentlessly curious. You do not need to be the expert in the room on day one. You need to be the person who becomes the expert fastest and brings others with you.

• High agency. You take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks. When something is unclear, you clarify it. When something is broken, you fix it.

• Comfortable in ambiguity at scale. Multi-jurisdictional operations, trade finance structures, AI-governed treasury systems — none of this exists as a finished manual. You write the manual.

• A natural institutional builder. You think about what the function looks like at ten times the complexity before you design it at today's complexity.

• Someone who has seen enough of a large institution to know what you are walking away from, and why the equity trajectory of a company like this is worth more than the certainty you are leaving behind.

• Grounded in legal and compliance fundamentals: You have a background in law or compliance, or have worked closely enough with these frameworks to speak the language fluently. You understand AML/CFT obligations, KYB/KYC standards, sanctions screening, and the regulatory expectations of institutions like BCB, BACEN, CNBV.

Why Now

The treasury infrastructure, trade finance architecture, operational expansion, and legal foundation that will carry Tensec from three markets to thirty needs to be built now, correctly, by someone who understands all of those dimensions at once. That person is rare. If you are reading this and recognizing yourself in it, we should talk.