Financial Services Compliance Lead

At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve.

Gusto is looking for an experienced financial services compliance professional to lead product compliance support across our consumer financial products, commercial financial services, payments, and embedded finance offerings. In this high-impact, cross-functional role, you'll serve as a strategic partner and trusted advisor to Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Marketing, Operations, and business leaders, helping design, operationalize, and scale practical compliance solutions that support responsible innovation and enable durable business growth.

This role reports to the Head of Financial Services Compliance. At Gusto, Legal & Compliance operates as an AI native team, and you'll help shape how AI enabled compliance workflows support smarter monitoring, stronger controls, faster regulatory change management, and more proactive risk identification, always with appropriate human in the loop controls for accuracy and accountability.

Gusto’s Legal & Compliance team partners closely with product and engineering teams to enable innovation, facilitate responsible company growth, accelerate Gusto’s roadmap, and deliver compliant products to our customers.

We are passionate about applying AI-native ways of working, thoughtful compliance risk management, and a daily service mindset to improve the experience of small business owners and their employees. Each team member is an owner, a trusted advisor, and a meaningful contributor to Gusto’s mission.

• →Serve as a strategic compliance partner to Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders on financial services regulations across lending, embedded finance, deposit products, payments, and money movement, covering launches, partnerships, product changes, and marketing collateral.
• →Mature and expand Gusto's Compliance Management Program to cover emerging financial services and payments offerings, using AI enabled tools to help the program scale as new products launch.
• →Own regulatory change management in partnership with Government & Regulatory Affairs, leveraging AI to track and assess new requirements faster and surface emerging risk earlier.
• →Translate complex regulations into clear, actionable guidance, controls, procedures, training, and documentation for cross-functional partners.
• →Oversee product compliance controls and run monitoring, control testing, risk assessments, and issue management across deposit, lending, payments, marketing, and consumer protection requirements (TILA, TISA, ECOA, FCRA, FDCPA, TCPA, CAN-SPAM, UDAAP, Reg E, NACHA rules, and related federal/state requirements).
• →Support vendor onboarding, third-party risk assessments, due diligence, and ongoing oversight for financial services and payments partners.
• →Serve as key liaison with banking and strategic partners, supporting audits, compliance reporting, examinations, regulatory inquiries, and remediation activities.
• →Partner across Product, Engineering, Legal, and Operations to design and apply AI enabled workflows for compliance monitoring, control testing, documentation, and issue management, balancing automation with appropriate human oversight.

• 10+ years of relevant compliance experience in an in-house legal, compliance, risk, or regulatory function at a regulated financial institution, fintech, payments company, or financial services business.
• Deep expertise in financial services and payments compliance, including consumer protection requirements such as TILA, TISA, ECOA, FCRA, FDCPA, Reg E, UDAAP, NACHA rules, TCPA, CAN-SPAM, and related state laws.
• Demonstrated experience with embedded finance, banking-as-a-service, sponsor bank partnerships, payments, ACH, card programs, lending, or deposit account products.
• A track record of building, scaling, or enhancing compliance programs (policies, controls, monitoring, training, issue management, regulatory change management), including using AI to make those programs more scalable and proactive.
• Experience advising Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, and Operations teams on product launches, strategic partnerships, and customer-facing or marketing materials, with strong cross-functional influence skills.
• Experience working directly with banking partners, payment processors, auditors, or regulators, including supporting internal/external audits, exams, partner bank reviews, and remediation.
• Strong judgment and issue-spotting skills, with the ability to distill complex regulations into clear guidance and make practical, risk-based calls in ambiguous or fast-moving situations.
• Demonstrated experience using AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Glean, Notion AI, or similar) to build scalable compliance workflows, paired with the curiosity and discipline to design appropriate human review, testing, and quality controls.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,085/yr to $182,638/yr in Denver & most major metro locations, and $174,470/yr to $215,180/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.