Senior Associate - Operations & Regulatory Infrastructure

📋 Description

• • As a Senior Associate in Operations & Regulatory Infrastructure at finmid GmbH, you will be instrumental in building and scaling the operational backbone of a cutting-edge regulated lending product. This role is pivotal in bridging the gap between regulated financial infrastructure and modern software engineering, ensuring the seamless and reliable operation of our services across Europe.
• • You will be responsible for designing and implementing robust operational processes, from the initial onboarding of merchants and managing the credit lifecycle to integrating with partners and fulfilling complex regulatory reporting requirements. Your primary objective will be to create processes and automation that are not only efficient but also treat regulatory mandates as integral design constraints, ensuring everything functions smoothly, automatically where possible, and with complete transparency.
• • This is an opportunity to join a high-output, early-stage team in Riga, Latvia, working in close collaboration with engineering, legal, and product teams across various European jurisdictions. You will be granted significant autonomy to shape the operational landscape, while being deeply embedded within the product development lifecycle, fostering a truly cross-functional environment.
• • The challenges you will tackle are novel and lack established playbooks, demanding intellectual agility and the ability to navigate complex information. You will need to seamlessly transition between interpreting regulatory texts, designing intricate processes, leveraging software tools, and generating management reports, maintaining a holistic understanding of the operational ecosystem.
• • **Key Responsibilities and Areas of Focus:**
• • **Operational Process Design:** Translate complex inputs, including regulatory frameworks, partner agreements, product strategies, and credit policies, into clear, actionable operational specifications. You will define precise requirements for execution, timing, triggers, and verification methods, ensuring clarity for engineering and operations teams.
• • **End-to-End Automation:** Architect and implement automated workflows that govern the product's lifecycle. This includes streamlining merchant onboarding, KYC/KYB procedures, credit monitoring, collections handovers, partner reporting, and regulatory filings. The ultimate goal is to achieve self-sustaining processes that only require human intervention for critical judgment calls. You will collaborate with product and engineering to determine the scope and boundaries of automation.
• • **Operational Monitoring and Reporting:** Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure operational efficiency and effectiveness. This involves defining metrics for processing times, exception rates, partner Service Level Agreement (SLA) adherence, portfolio quality, and compliance status. You will set up data pipelines, develop comprehensive dashboards, and provide management with real-time insights into product performance. A significant part of this will involve managing regulatory reporting and communications with the Bank of Latvia.
• • **Automation and AI Tooling:** Proactively identify opportunities to leverage automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to reduce manual workload and enhance accuracy. This could span document processing, data screening, validation, reporting, and even regulatory change detection. You will work hands-on with engineering to deploy and integrate effective AI solutions.
• • **Internal Policy and Control Architecture:** Develop and maintain version-controlled internal policies and control frameworks. These will be meticulously mapped to the processes they govern, ensuring that changes in requirements are efficiently propagated through relevant workflows. You will also play a role in stress-testing operational processes to identify potential vulnerabilities.
• • **Your First 3 Months Will Involve:**
• • Comprehensive mapping of all core operational processes, identifying bottlenecks, manual workarounds, and existing gaps.
• • Gaining a deep understanding of the regulatory framework to independently design compliant operational solutions.
• • Successfully eliminating at least one significant manual workflow through automation.
• • Developing a 12-month strategic vision for the operational infrastructure, including a prioritized roadmap.
• • Becoming proficient with the team's AI tools (e.g., Claude, Codex) to integrate them into your daily workflow.
• • Building your first operational dashboard to visualize a critical business metric.