Senior Program Manager, Compliance

Justworks is seeking a Senior Program Manager, Compliance to lead planning, governance, and execution across the Product Compliance portfolio. You thrive in highly regulated environments where priorities evolve quickly and complex work spans multiple teams. You understand compliance, risk, controls, and operations—not necessarily because you're the deepest subject matter expert in every area, but because you know how to bring the right experts together and translate complex priorities into action. You are equal parts strategic planner, program leader, and operational problem solver. You bring structure to ambiguity, connect work across teams, identify risks and dependencies early, and create the transparency and accountability needed to drive complex initiatives through completion. You are comfortable partnering across Compliance, Operations, Product, Engineering, Accounting, Finance, Legal, Internal Audit, Security, and other teams to strengthen compliance while enabling the business to scale.

What You Will Work On

Drive the Product Compliance Portfolio

• Develop and maintain an integrated view of Product Compliance priorities, initiatives, milestones, dependencies, and risks.
• Partner with Product Compliance leadership to prioritize work based on regulatory risk, business impact, dependencies, and available capacity.
• Translate priorities into executable plans with clear ownership, sequencing, milestones, and outcomes.
• Establish planning and reporting rhythms that provide leadership with visibility into progress, risks, dependencies, and areas requiring intervention.
• Drive initiatives through completion and ensure identified issues are tracked to sustainable resolution.

Lead Complex Cross-Functional Programs

• Lead complex programs that span Product Compliance and cross-functional partners, particularly where successful outcomes require coordinated changes across Operations, Product, Engineering, Accounting, Finance, Legal, Internal Audit, or other teams.
• Drive program structure, planning, coordination, execution, and escalation while partnering with subject matter experts who retain responsibility for substantive compliance decisions.
• Identify dependencies, risks, resource constraints, and blockers early and work across teams to resolve them.
• A key near-term priority will be driving execution of the Compliance Risk & Remediation program, including coordinating remediation across Product Compliance and cross-functional partners and establishing governance to track identified issues through resolution.

Build Product Compliance Governance

• Establish scalable governance for Product Compliance initiatives, including intake, prioritization, ownership, milestone tracking, risk and dependency management, escalation, and executive reporting.
• Develop repeatable operating rhythms that strengthen accountability and transparency across the portfolio.
• Create clear mechanisms for surfacing risks, decisions, and areas requiring leadership or cross-functional support.

Strengthen the Product Compliance Operating Model

• Partner with Product Compliance leadership and subject matter experts to strengthen the operating model, including clarity of roles, responsibilities, and ownership.
• Improve documentation and business continuity across critical compliance processes and support sustainable control implementation.
• Develop meaningful measures of compliance performance, risk, and execution, while reducing single points of failure across the function.

Enable Operational Excellence

• Identify and help drive opportunities to simplify workflows, reduce manual and duplicate work, strengthen quality and controls, and improve regulatory response and execution.
• Increase automation and leverage technology and AI where appropriate to improve efficiency, scalability, and sustainability.

Measure Success

• Develop dashboards and executive reporting that provide visibility into portfolio health, remediation status, milestones, dependencies, compliance risks, control implementation, KPIs, and capacity considerations.
• Provide Product Compliance leadership with actionable insights and recommendations, including where priorities, resources, or cross-functional support may need to shift.

How You Will Do Your Work

As a Senior Program Manager, Compliance, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately results in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes are anchored in the following:

• Strategic Planning - Develop roadmaps and execution plans that balance regulatory and risk priorities with business objectives and organizational capacity.
• Program Leadership - Lead multiple complex initiatives while maintaining clarity on priorities, ownership, dependencies, and outcomes.
• Systems Thinking - Understand how compliance, risk, technology, operations, controls, and business processes intersect across the organization.
• Operational Excellence - Build scalable ways of working that improve execution and efficiency while strengthening compliance.
• Risk Management - Identify program risks and dependencies early, develop mitigation strategies, escalate appropriately, and proactively remove blockers.
• Cross-Functional Influence - Build trusted partnerships and drive outcomes across technical and business teams without direct authority.
• Executive Communication - Translate complex program status, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs into concise executive updates and recommendations.
• Continuous Improvement - Identify opportunities to improve processes, controls, automation, and operating maturity across Product Compliance.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
• Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
• Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
• Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.
• Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

Required

• 8+ years of program management, compliance operations, operational excellence, or related experience
• 5+ years leading complex cross-functional initiatives
• Experience working in a highly regulated environment such as payroll, HR technology, financial services, fintech, or a similarly complex industry
• Demonstrated experience translating complex regulatory, risk, operational, or control priorities into structured programs and executable plans
• Experience leading programs that require coordination across multiple business and technical functions
• Demonstrated success building roadmaps, governance processes, and executive reporting
• Experience working with risk, compliance, internal controls, audit, or remediation programs
• Strong ability to influence and drive outcomes across teams without direct authority
• Exceptional organizational, analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
• Ability to operate effectively through ambiguity and competing priorities

Preferred

• Experience in payroll, payroll tax, SaaS, PEO, fintech, or HR technology environments
• Experience leading compliance, risk, control, or regulatory remediation programs
• Experience with operational or process transformation
• Experience partnering with Product and Engineering teams on complex operational or compliance initiatives
• Experience with AI-enabled workflow automation or other technology-enabled process improvements
• Familiarity with enterprise risk

The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $121,000.00 - $151,000.00 per year.

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