Chief Audit Officer
Overview
Mercury aims to provide a magical banking and financial workflow experience for its customers while maintaining rigorous standards. Internal audit plays a crucial role in achieving this balance.
About the Role
Lead Mercury's independent assurance program, aligning with the company's growth, regulatory expectations, and emerging risks. Serve as a strategic partner to the Board and Audit Committee, providing an objective, enterprise-wide view of financial, operational, and technical resilience.
Responsibilities
Own the Audit Vision — evolve the risk-based internal audit strategy and ensure alignment with the company’s growth, regulatory expectations, and emerging risks.
Provide Independent Assurance — deliver objective evaluations to the Board and Audit Committee(s) on the effectiveness of our risk management, internal controls, and governance.
Audit the Stack — own the audit universe; ensuring completeness of Audit coverage across Mercury.
Oversee the audit program to ensure the plan includes the appropriate mix of technical and operational audits that dive deep into our business, automated movement of funds, and cloud infrastructure to ensure data integrity and security.
Validate the "Magic" — ensure our audit program includes timely validation that new and existing product workflows and financial controls are operating exactly as intended, identifying potential friction before it impacts the customer.
Bridge the Regulatory Gap — act as a key point of contact for our partner banks and regulators, providing them with the confidence that Mercury’s internal oversight is rigorous and proactive.
Automate Oversight — design and implement continuous monitoring systems that replace manual checklists with real-time, data-driven audit insights.
Champion Sustainable Remediation — serve as the senior escalation point to partner with Engineering, Product, and Risk leads to ensure audit findings result in structural improvements, not just temporary fixes and that remediations are appropriately prioritized within the roadmaps, in line with risk.
Requirements
Proven leadership in audit — you’ve built or scaled internal audit functions within high-growth banking or financial services, ideally at the intersection of traditional finance and fintech innovation.
Technical fluency — you are comfortable in a cloud-native, remote-first environment. You can discuss API integrity and automated controls as easily as you can discuss balance sheets and reconciliations.
Navigate the regulatory landscape with confidence — you know what regulators expect, you’re comfortable engaging directly with them, and you can help Mercury anticipate and adapt to a changing environment.
Maintain strong and effective independence — you have the fortitude to deliver difficult news and the diplomacy to ensure those insights lead to positive change.
Communicate clearly and simply — whether you’re talking to the Board, regulators, engineers, or product teams, you cut through jargon and make risk concepts understandable and actionable.
Balance protection with possibility — you know how to safeguard the company without slowing it down, and you see the audit function as a way to unlock and safeguard innovation, not stop it.
Lead with curiosity and vision — you’re ambitious about where audit can go in a modern fintech, and you bring the curiosity to explore new ideas, new markets, and new ways of serving customers safely.
Inspire and develop others — you build strong teams, mentor future leaders, and foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and trust across the company.
Qualifications
Master’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or related field.
CPA certification preferred.
At least 10 years of experience in internal audit, preferably in a high-growth financial services environment.
Experience leading audit teams and managing complex projects.
Strong understanding of financial regulations and compliance requirements.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
Ability to work independently and collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
Skills
Strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
Ability to communicate complex audit findings in a clear and concise manner.
Experience with data analytics and continuous monitoring tools.
Knowledge of cloud computing and cybersecurity principles.
Experience with regulatory reporting and compliance processes.
Benefits
Mercury offers a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.
Pay
The target new hire base salary ranges for this role are as follows: US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $275,400 - $361,400 US employees outside of the New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $247,900 - $325,250
Schedule
Full-time position.