Strategy and Operations Manager

About ARQ

ARQ is one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the world. Our mission is to redefine how people interact with money across borders, building the backbone to move value seamlessly. We’re still early in our journey, which means every person who joins shapes the future of our product, culture, and growth. If you’re excited by big challenges, global impact, and the chance to grow fast with a world-class team, ARQ is the place to do it.

The Role

Licensing is mission-critical at ARQ. As we expand across banking, wealth management, payments, and crypto, in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, the ability to secure and maintain the right licenses determines whether we can operate, grow, and serve our customers at all.

You will own the global licensing workstream end to end. You will track every active and upcoming license application across all jurisdictions, drive deliverables across product, legal, operations, and finance, and make sure ARQ has the regulatory permissions it needs to operate and scale its business. You will work directly with senior leadership and external counsel, and you will be expected to bring structure, rigour, and pace to one of the most consequential workstreams in the company.

This role sits at the intersection of regulatory strategy, product, operations, legal, and finance. If you thrive in complex, high-stakes environments and want early ownership at a world-class fintech, this is for you.

What you’ll be doing

You will drive the global licensing agenda across all licenses and jurisdictions, ensuring ARQ has the permissions it needs to operate and grow, and that nothing falls through the cracks.

Own the global licensing pipeline

• Maintain a single source of truth for all active and upcoming license expansions globally, covering banking, payments, wealth, and crypto across multiple jurisdictions

• Track every milestone, deadline, and dependency in each licensing process, surfacing risks early and driving resolution across teams

• Build and manage a structured project plan for each licensing workstream, ensuring accountability across product, legal, finance, and operations stakeholders

• Coordinate with external counsel and local advisors in each jurisdiction, managing deliverable quality, timeline, and cost

Drive cross-functional execution

• Translate regulatory requirements into actionable workstreams for product, engineering, operations, finance, and legal teams, owning follow-through on each

• Draft and structure submissions, policy documents, regulatory responses, and internal materials with rigour and precision

• Coordinate preparation for regulatory submissions, implementation tables, and go-live audits, ensuring each team is ready and all materials are of the highest standard

• Act as the connective tissue between global teams and in-market General Managers or licensing leads, ensuring alignment and removing blockers

Build the licensing function

• Design and continuously improve ARQ’s internal systems, templates, and playbooks for managing licensing processes at scale across multiple jurisdictions

• Develop frameworks for evaluating new license requirements as ARQ enters new markets or launches new products

• Monitor regulatory developments across key jurisdictions, identifying licensing implications early and advising leadership proactively

• Support the maintenance and renewal of existing licenses, ensuring ongoing compliance with license conditions and regulatory expectations

What you’ll need

• 3-6 years of experience in a high-performance environment: MBB management consulting, or an early leadership role at a high-growth startup

• Exceptional structured problem-solving and analytical skills: you break complex, ambiguous situations into clear plans and drive them to completion

• Outstanding written and verbal communication; you can synthesise complexity into precise, compelling documents and presentations for senior audiences

• Proven project management and organisational ability: you run multiple high-stakes workstreams in parallel without dropping details

• Strong learning velocity and intellectual curiosity; you pick up new domains quickly and operate confidently across legal, regulatory, financial, and technical subject matter

• High ownership mentality with a bias for action: you don’t wait to be told what to do and you hold yourself and others accountable for outcomes

• Comfort operating in fast-moving, early-stage environments with limited structure and high ambiguity

Nice-to-haves

• Exposure to financial services, fintech, or regulatory environments, whether through consulting engagements, direct roles, or coursework

• Experience working across multiple jurisdictions or geographies simultaneously