Head of Operations - Financial Services

Are you looking to have an impact on the daily life of millions of entrepreneurs in France (and tomorrow in Europe)?

Are you looking for a work environment that values trust, proactivity, and autonomy?

Then Pennylane is the right place for you !

Our vision

We aim to become the most beloved financial Operating System of French SMEs and Accounting Firms (and soon, European ones).

We help entrepreneurs rid themselves of time-consuming tasks related to accounting and finance while providing them with access to key financial information to assist in making the best decisions for their business.

About us

Pennylane is one of the fastest growing Fintechs in France (and soon to be in Europe!)

In 5 years of existence, we've managed to :

Make ourselves known as a groundbreaking accounting and financial software for small businesses and their accountants

Raise a total of €400 millions, including from Sequoia, the famous fund from the Silicon Valley who invested early in companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, Paypal and much more...

Grow from 7 cofounders to 1000 happy Pennylaners : we're now recognized as one of the greatest places to work in France (and also remotely), with a 4.6/5 rating on Glassdoor.

Build an international environment with more than 25 nationalities, with a strong remote-friendly culture, where 30% of the employees are already working from all parts of Europe

Earn the trust of thousands of customers and accounting firms and obtain outstanding ratings

Already more than 900,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and over 6000 accounting firms use Pennylane in France!

Context

We are currently operating approximately 30k business accounts under a BaaS model. The role of Financial Services in Pennylane's strategy is set to grow, both in terms of revenue and product contribution, to serve our 750k+ current customer base.

As such, we are initiating a process to get licensed as Etablissement de paiement et Société de financement to meet our current functional scope at the very least. Our ambition is to start onboarding new customers by early 2027 before starting migrating existing customers.

To meet this ambition, we are starting to hire our Tech, Product, Compliance and Ops leaders.

Reporting directly to the COO, you will be responsible for the application of the company LCB-FT and risk policies on both payment & credit scopes. You will be monitoring and optimizing the performance of the first line of defense, including onboarding, transaction monitoring, fraud & risk.

Your mission would be to :

* Build & lead three teams of analysts (KYB, Transaction monitoring, Risk & Fraud)

* Deploy LCB-FT policies & control their proper application by your teams

* Contribute to KYB & TM tooling implementation & team training

* Optimize the efficiency of your teams and tools, leveraging AI and automating processes while protecting at all cost our risk appetite

* Work in close collaboration with the Compliance & Fraud & Risk teams of the Lo D2

This is a greenfield project with high autonomy and responsibility, direct exposure to regulators, and the opportunity to shape the operations of a fast-growing fintech with a robust pre-existing customer base

Responsibilities phasing

* Phase 1 (pre-licence & migration, ) :

* Work closely with the COO & Strategic Project Manager to support licence application and customer migration from BaaS to EP

* Focus 100% on payment operations (KYB, TM, Fraud) and building LoD1 infrastructure

* Phase 2 (post-licence, 2027+) :

* Progressively integrate credit operations (credit assessment & decisioning) as the Société de Financement scope ramps up

* Scale LoD1 to support both payment and credit activities across a growing customer base

Missions & objectives

Operations program

* Build and scale LoD1 from 30k to 300k+ accounts within 24 months post-licence

* Recruit, onboard and train 3 operational teams: KYB/KYC L1 (target: 15-20 FTE), Transaction Monitoring L1 (target: 10-15 FTE), Fraud & Risk L1 (target: 5-8 FTE)

* Define team structures, roles, responsibilities, and career paths aligned with regulatory requirements

* Establish SLAs and performance frameworks for each team

* Define collaboration…