Founding Risk & Compliance Systems Engineer Chicago, IL or Remote

In July 1969, as Apollo 11 approached the Moon, the spacecraft’s guidance computer began receiving more work than it could process. The system did not treat every signal equally. It recognized which tasks mattered most, discarded lower-priority work, and continued handling the calculations required for landing. The success was not simply a matter of powerful hardware. It was the result of a system designed to distinguish urgency from noise, preserve a clear record of what happened, and act safely under pressure. Financial systems face a similar problem every day. A single transaction rarely tells the entire story. Risk emerges through patterns: an account opening that does not match a business profile, a payment route that changes unexpectedly, a document that conflicts with the rest of a customer record, or a series of activities that becomes concerning only when viewed together. The challenge is not merely collecting those signals. It is building the systems that can interpret them responsibly, route them to the right people, preserve evidence, and support decisions that customers, partners, and regulators can trust. Ora is being built around that principle. We are creating a premium financial operating system for modern businesses: one place for banking, cards, spend, bill pay, invoicing, tax readiness, global financial operations, and intelligent financial guidance. For Ora, trust is not a page in the footer or a policy written after the product is built. It is part of the product itself. It lives in onboarding flows, payment controls, permissions, risk decisions, audit trails, customer communications, and the infrastructure behind every financial workflow. We are looking for a Founding Risk & Compliance Systems Engineer to help build those systems from the beginning. This is a role for an engineer who wants to work at the intersection of product, financial infrastructure, data, fraud prevention, compliance operations, and secure system design. You will help translate risk and compliance requirements into practical software that protects customers, enables responsible growth, and gives Ora the operational foundation required to become a trusted financial platform. You will work closely with Ora’s compliance leadership, product, engineering, operations, and banking or financial-infrastructure partners to design and build the tools that make responsible financial operations possible at scale. *Ora is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through banking partners. In this role, you will: Build the internal systems behind Ora’s risk and compliance operations, including onboarding decisioning, customer-risk profiles, alert workflows, review queues, case management, audit trails, and reporting. Design secure workflows for KYC, KYB, beneficial ownership, sanctions screening, identity verification, customer due diligence, and ongoing monitoring. Build integrations with identity, KYC/KYB, fraud, sanctions, transaction-monitoring, banking, card, and payment-infrastructure providers. Develop event-driven systems that ingest and evaluate account, payment, card, document, and behavioral signals in near real time. Help create flexible rules and workflow engines that allow Ora’s compliance and risk teams to configure thresholds, decision logic, escalation paths, and review processes without requiring a full engineering release for every change. Partner with the Fractional Compliance / BSA-AML Lead to turn policies, risk assessments, and program requirements into product requirements and operational controls. Build clear, usable internal interfaces for risk analysts and operations teams to investigate alerts, review evidence, document decisions, and elevate cases. Design data models and evidence systems that make it possible to understand why a decision was made, who made it, what information was used, and what actions followed. Help establish monitoring, observability, quality‑assurance, and reporting systems for risk controls and financial workflows. Build strong permissions, access‑control, logging, retention, and sensitive‑data‑handling practices across risk and compliance tooling. Partner with product and design to ensure customer‑facing verification, review, restriction, and communication flows are clear, respectful, and appropriately transparent. Help set the technical standards, architecture, and engineering culture for one of Ora’s most important long‑term capabilities. What success looks like In your first 90 days, you will have developed a clear view of Ora’s customer lifecycle, financial workflows, infrastructure partners, risk requirements, and product architecture. You will begin shipping foundational systems for identity, onboarding, auditability, and operational review. Within your first six months, Ora should have a credible, scalable foundation for customer‑risk assessment, vendor orchestration, decision logging, case workflows, monitoring, and internal controls. Over time, your work will help Ora operate with the confidence and discipline required of a company trusted with sensitive customer information and financial activity. The ideal candidate: Has 4+ years of software engineering experience, preferably with backend, platform, data, or full‑stack systems. Has experience building products in fintech, banking, payments, identity, fraud, cybersecurity, compliance technology, or another high‑trust technical environment. Is highly capable with TypeScript, Node.js, APIs, relational databases such as PostgreSQL, asynchronous workflows, queues, webhooks, and event‑driven systems. Understands how to design reliable systems around sensitive data, role‑based permissions, auditability, operational controls, and secure integrations. Can translate complex business, operational, or regulatory requirements into clear technical systems and maintainable product workflows. Is comfortable working through ambiguity and making pragmatic architectural decisions in an early‑stage environment. Has strong judgment around security, reliability, privacy, and failure modes. Communicates clearly with engineers, product leaders, compliance professionals, external partners, and non‑technical teammates. Cares about building software that helps people make safer, more consistent decisions rather than simply automating activity. Wants meaningful ownership over foundational systems that will shape how Ora operates for years. Especially valuable, but not required: Experience with KYC, KYB, identity verification, fraud detection, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, AML case management, or payment‑risk tooling. Experience integrating vendors such as identity providers, financial‑data providers, fraud platforms, transaction‑monitoring systems, card processors, or banking APIs. Experience building rules engines, workflow engines, internal operations tools, investigation dashboards, or risk‑deciding systems. Familiarity with BSA/AML, OFAC, CIP, customer due diligence, beneficial ownership, suspicious‑activity escalation, or sponsor‑bank compliance expectations. Experience with Python, NestJS, Kafka or similar event‑streaming tools, Temporal or workflow orchestration tools, data warehouses, or machine‑learning‑assisted risk systems. Experience working directly with compliance, legal, fraud, operations, or security teams in a regulated product environment. This role may be especially compelling for you if: You want to build the technical infrastructure behind responsible financial products. You believe risk and compliance can be a product advantage when the systems are thoughtfully designed. You enjoy solving problems where data, workflows, judgment, and customer trust all matter at once. You want to work on systems with real‑world consequences, where reliability and clarity matter more than shortcuts. You are excited by the chance to help build a premium financial platform with strong controls from its earliest stage. What we offer Meaningful equity and the opportunity to become a foundational technical owner of Ora’s trust and risk infrastructure. Direct collaboration with the founder, compliance leadership, product, engineering, and financial‑infrastructure partners. High autonomy and the ability to shape the architecture, tooling, and standards behind Ora’s risk and compliance systems. The opportunity to work at the intersection of modern engineering, financial infrastructure, AI, security, and responsible product design. A culture built around ownership, craft, clarity, trust, and ambitious execution. Ora is committed to building an inclusive team. We consider applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic. Not quite the right fit? We're always open to meeting strong people, even when the timing or role isn't perfect. Tell us how you'd like to contribute at View email address on click.appcast.io. #J-18808-Ljbffr Orafin