The role of an Operational Assurance Lead at Remote
Remote is building the infrastructure that makes global payroll and employment possible for everyone, everywhere. Our team is made up of people who want to own a piece of that work, not just contribute to it. That work happens across six continents, only Antarctica left to go, entirely remote. It also requires real fluency with AI in every role, not just familiarity with it.
Our standards are high, and the ownership is total. You’ll have the trust and space to find your own way to the best answer, and the support to see it through, because that’s how we build things that actually work at this scale. In return, your career grows faster, because at Remote, growth is tied to results. We’re founded on the principle that where someone lives should never limit what they can achieve, and we operate exactly that way.
Job Description
The Position
As Operational Assurance Lead, you will give the business independent confidence that our controls work as we scale into new products and new markets. Your focus is evidence. You will test whether controls are designed properly and operating properly, confirm readiness before we launch and give leadership a clear view of where growth is running ahead of control maturity.
The wider team owns governance frameworks, identifies & quantifies risk and strengthens compliance. You own the testing, the evidence and the independent opinion on whether controls are actually working. That separation is deliberate and it is what makes the assurance credible to leadership, auditors and customers.
You will work closely with International Operations, Legal, Product, Payroll Operations and other teams to bring assurance into decisions early rather than validating them after the fact.
Responsibilities
Assurance for Scale
- Provide independent assurance that Remote can enter new markets and launch new products without unmanaged operational or compliance exposure
- Run pre launch assurance reviews for country launches, product releases and new operating models, confirming that the required controls exist and function before go live
- Define what ready to scale means in practice, so launch decisions are made against evidence rather than confidence
- Give a clear assurance opinion at decision points, including where the honest answer is not yet
Controls Effectiveness Testing
- Own controls effectiveness testing across payroll, compliance and operational processes, covering both design effectiveness and operating effectiveness
- Maintain a rolling assurance plan prioritised by exposure, regulatory risk and scale rather than testing everything at equal depth
- Set the evidence standard for testing, including sampling approach, what counts as sufficient evidence and how results are documented
- Track control gaps and failures through to remediation with named owners and agreed dates, then re test to confirm closure
- Build reusable testing approaches and evidence templates so assurance capacity scales without adding headcount
Partnering with IO, Legal and the Business
- Work alongside International Operations and Legal on market entry, product design and structural change, bringing an assurance view alongside legal advice and operational feasibility
- Translate legal and regulatory requirements into testable controls and clear operational obligations that teams can actually run
- Act as the single coordination point for assurance input into cross functional projects, so teams receive one view rather than several
- Work with the operational risk team so that testing is aimed at the risks they have identified and quantified as material, while keeping the testing and the opinion independent
Third Party and Vendor Assurance
- Assess the controls that sit around vendor and partner dependencies, including how external partners affect customers, service delivery and resilience
- Assure that agreed contractual and operational controls with third parties are being applied in practice, not just documented
Reporting and Audit Readiness
- Report assurance results to leadership with a clear opinion on control health, systemic themes and areas of concentration
- Strengthen audit readiness by keeping control documentation, testing records and evidence current and defensible
- Provide assurance input into customer security and compliance assessments where operational controls are in scope
- Escalate where risk is being accepted by default rather than by decision
Learning from Failure
- Use incidents, loss events and RCA outcomes as assurance inputs, testing whether agreed fixes actually held
- Identify systemic control weaknesses across teams and feed them back into the assurance plan
What you bring
- Strong experience in operational assurance, internal controls or incident management in a global or regulated environment
- Demonstrated ability to design and run controls testing, including sampling, evidence standards and re testing, and to translate findings into remediation the business will own
- Comfortable giving an independent opinion that may be unwelcome, and holding it with evidence rather than authority
- Experience working cross functionally across operations, product, compliance and technology teams
- Strong understanding of control design principles and risk evaluation methodologies
- Analytical mindset with the ability to identify patterns and systemic weaknesses
- Confident influencing senior stakeholders and driving accountability without direct authority
- Structured and organized with strong documentation and follow through
- Comfortable balancing commercial priorities with risk management discipline
- Systems thinker who looks beyond individual incidents to underlying root causes
- Comfortable operating in an async and fully remote environment
Practicals
- Reporting line: Manager, Global Payroll Strategy & Compliance
- Team: Payroll Risk & Compliance
- Location: Anywhere in the world
- Start date: As soon as possible
Application process
- Recruiter interview
- Hiring manager interview
- Team interview
- Bar Raiser Interview
- Offer and Prior employment verification check
Benefits
Our full benefits & perks are explained in our handbook at remote.com/r/benefits. As a global company, each country works differently, but some benefits/perks are for all Remoters:
- work from anywhere
- flexible paid time off
- flexible working hours (we are async)
- 16 weeks paid parental leave
- budget towards co-working spaces, learning and wellness (including gym memberships)
- mental health support services
- stock options
- home office budget & IT equipment
How you’ll plan your day (and life)
We work async at Remote which means you can plan your schedule around your life (and not around meetings). Read more at remote.com/async.
You will be empowered to take ownership and be proactive. When in doubt you will default to action instead of waiting. Your life-work balance is important and you will be encouraged to put yourself and your family first, and fit work around your needs.
If that sounds like something you want, apply now!
Compensation
Remote’s Total Rewards philosophy is to ensure fair, unbiased compensation and fair equity pay along with competitive benefits in all locations in which we operate. We do not agree to or encourage cheap-labor practices and therefore we ensure to pay locally competitive rates. We hope to inspire other companies to support global talent-hiring and bring local wealth to developing countries.
At first glance our salary bands seem quite wide – here is some context. At Remote we have international operations and a globally distributed workforce. We use geo ranges to consider geographic pay differentials as part of our global compensation strategy to remain competitive in various markets while we hire globally.
Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location, and our job titles may span more than one career level. The interviewer will share further details with the candidate on the more restricted pay range for the role in line with their specific location. The individual pay for the successful candidate in this role is dependent upon many factors such as location, transferable or job-related skills, work experience, relevant training, business needs, internal parity and market demands. The base salary range may be subject to change.
At Remote, we foster internal mobility as a key element of our culture of employee growth and development, supported by a compensation philosophy that guarantees pay equity and fairness. Therefore, all compensation changes associated with an internal move will be reviewed by the Total Rewards & People Enablement team on a case by case basis.
The annual salary range for this full-time position is $49,800 to $112,050.
To learn more about Remote visit their website
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