Consumer Compliance Manager, Complaints

Job description

We're looking for a compliance professional to partner with our Customer Experience team, turning consumer complaint trends into fixes that address root causes, not just one-off remediations. We see complaints as direct, free feedback from our most valued asset: our customers, and we treat that signal with the weight it deserves. In this role, you'll partner closely with CX on investigation and response, own trending and reporting to our bank partners, and take on the part most complaint roles never get to: tracing patterns back to root cause and driving the remediation that closes the loop for good. Cardless is a program manager that partners with FDIC- and OCC-regulated issuing banks to design and deliver co-branded credit and debit card programs. Our compliance team operates within this bank partnership model, which means your complaint work must account for obligations across multiple bank partners with different regulatory expectations, categorization standards, and reporting cadences. Understanding the program manager structure is key to succeeding in this role. This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role. You will personally work on critical complaints, support investigations, review responses, and work with Customer Experience and Engineering to get the underlying defect fixed. You will also have the opportunity to help automate the function itself. We have the foundations of a complaint handling program in place. Still, you'll be responsible for identifying overall program enhancements, including clear intake, defined categorization, tracked target dates, real trend analysis, and audit-ready records. We're also in the process of implementing better tooling, and you'll be responsible for overseeing the systems implementation. This is a high-ownership role for someone who is energized by messy, cross-functional problems and who is not satisfied with closing a ticket when the thing that caused it is still there. RESPONSIBILITIES Own the complaint program end to end - Own intake, triage, categorization, investigation, and resolution for consumer complaints across our card programs, including direct complaints and agency complaints from the CFPB, FDIC, Better Business Bureau, state attorneys general, and counsel. - Draft investigation summaries and consumer responses that are accurate, plain-spoken, and defensible if a regulator reads them later. - Manage complaint target dates and turnaround commitments, and escalate before a clock is missed rather than after. - Produce the monthly complaint reporting package for each bank partner, including trend analysis and a written summary, and adapt each package to that partner's categorization and reporting expectations. - Prepare quarterly complaint findings for the Compliance Committee and the Board. Find the root cause, not just the resolution - Analyze complaint volume, categories, and drivers to identify patterns rather than treating each complaint as an isolated event. - Run root cause analysis on recurring complaint themes, distinguishing a one-time servicing error from a product defect, a disclosure gap, a broken workflow, or a control failure. - Convert confirmed root causes into logged issues with corrective action plans, named owners, and target dates. - Drive remediation to closure with Engineering, Product, and Operations, validate that the fix worked, and confirm the complaint theme actually stops recurring. - Escalate repeat issues clearly and early, especially where a previously remediated problem resurfaces. Partner with Customer Experience - Work side by side with our Customer Experience team, which is the front line for complaint intake, to improve how complaints are identified, tagged, and documented at first contact. - Write and maintain the procedures, response templates, and agent guidance that let the front line handle routine matters correctly without escalation. - Provide practical regulatory guidance to support agents in the moment, and build the review loop that catches handling problems before a consumer escalates. Strengthen the program - Improve complaint tooling, intake workflows, and reporting, including automation, so coverage scales faster than headcount. - Maintain complaint records and documentation that are organized, complete, and ready for an examination or an audit. - Support examination readiness and bank partner reviews by providing complaint data, investigations, and remediation status. - Provide coverage across other compliance functions, as needed. REQUIREMENTS - Typically 4 to 7 years in consumer compliance, complaint management, consumer advocacy, disputes, or a closely related function within banking, fintech, credit cards, lending, or payments. - Hands-on experience investigating and resolving consumer complaints, including regulatory and agency complaints, in a regulated consumer financial services environment. - Working knowledge of the consumer protection regulations that complaints turn on: Regulation Z, Regulation E, Regulation B, UDAAP, FCRA, and FDCPA. - Demonstrated root cause analysis skill. You can take a cluster of complaints, work out what is actually causing them, and say so in writing with evidence behind it. - Experience driving corrective action across functions you do not manage, particularly with Engineering and Operations, and following it through to validated closure. - Excellent written communication. A large share of this job is writing: consumer responses, investigation summaries, and reporting that leadership and bank partners rely on. - Comfort using data and AI tools to work more efficiently and expand coverage rather than adding manual steps. - Strong organization and the ability to hold many open matters with hard deadlines without dropping one. - Proven ability to operate independently in a fast-paced environment, without a defined playbook or daily check-ins. BONUS POINTS - Experience in credit card issuing or co-branded card programs. - Experience responding to CFPB portal complaints or working complaints alongside a partner bank. - Background in disputes, fraud, or servicing operations, which is where many complaint root causes live. - Experience building or maturing a complaint management program rather than inheriting a finished one. - Experience writing procedures, response templates, or agent guidance for a support organization. - CRCM or another consumer compliance certification. - Fluency with workflow automation and comfort building the tooling you wish you had. BEFORE YOU APPLY A few things worth knowing: - We work in the office 5 days a week. We know that is a dealbreaker for some people, and that is okay. - This is an early-stage company. We are a small team servicing hundreds of thousands of customers. You will be building processes that do not exist yet, not optimizing ones that do. If you want structure handed to you, this is not the right fit. - You will need to be highly self-directed. There is not a playbook for this role, and you will not get daily check-ins. We are looking for someone who sees what is broken or missing, takes ownership, and follows through without being asked. - The pace is intense, and this role is hands-on. We have aggressive goals and a lot to build. This is not a 9-to-5, quiet, maintenance-mode compliance job, and you will be in the middle of everything. - Complaints are real people having a bad experience with a product we built. We take that seriously, and we expect you to as well. If that scared you off, no hard feelings. If it got you excited, keep reading. WHY THIS ROLE IS COOL - You get the whole loop. Most complaint roles stop at the response letter. This one runs through root cause, corrective action, and validation, so you actually get to fix things rather than apologize for them repeatedly. - Complaints are one of the most visible compliance functions we have. Your analysis goes to our bank partners, the Compliance Committee, and the Board. - Build the program, do not inherit it. Complaint handling works today, but you'll get the chance to optimize it. You will turn it into an efficient and effective operating program that will help mitigate future issues and complaints. - Work across multiple bank partner relationships with different regulators and expectations. - You will sit at the intersection of Compliance, Customer Experience, Engineering, and Product, which is the best seat in the company for understanding how everything actually works. - We are AI-forward, and we mean it. If you want to automate the boring parts of this job, nobody will stop you (in fact, we give you all the resources to do it). COMPENSATION This role has an annual starting salary range of $135,000 to $160,000 plus equity and benefits. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location. BENEFITS We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits: - 💸 Meaningful Start-up equity - 🏥 100% health, vision & dental primary coverage - ➕ 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage - 🍱 Catered lunches - 🚎 $250/month Commuter benefit - 👶 Parental leave - ✈️ Team building events & happy hours - 🌴 Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year - 🖥️ Apple equipment - 💸 401k plan LOCATION We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square, near the Transamerica building. Very convenient between the Montgomery and Embarcadero BART stations. This role is in-office 5 days a week. WHO THRIVES IN THIS ROLE, AND WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE Who thrives here You are the person who reads the fifth complaint about the same benefit not posting and stops writing responses long enough to ask why. You have personally investigated consumer complaints, written the response that went to a regulator, and then gone and found the workflow, the code path, or the disclosure that caused it. You are comfortable telling an engineer their fix did not work, and comfortable being told your analysis missed something. You write well, and you write fast, because this job is mostly writing under a deadline. You are organized enough to hold twenty open matters with hard target dates and not lose one. You like Customer Experience people, and they like you, because you show up with a template and a procedure instead of a complaint about their tagging. You are comfortable with a blank page. You see that as something to build rather than something to be frustrated by. And you are energized, not unsettled, by a program manager model where the same complaint has to satisfy us, a brand partner, and an issuing bank with its own regulator. What success looks like In your first 90 days, you have taken over the live complaint queue, and nothing is missing a target date. You have learned our programs, products, and partners well enough to investigate without a chaperone; you have mapped how complaints actually arrive today across every channel, and you have a first cut of complaint categorization and trend reporting that our bank partners recognize as an improvement. By six months, you own a functioning complaint program: defined intake, consistent categorization, reliable monthly reporting to each bank partner, and quarterly findings that go to the Compliance Committee and the Board without a fire drill. You have taken at least two recurring complaint themes all the way through root cause to validated remediation, and the volume in those categories is measurably down. Customer Experience is handling routine matters correctly at first contact because you gave them the procedures and templates to do it. Complaints have gone from the thing we react to into the early warning system the rest of the compliance program uses.