Head of Strategy & Operations

Head of Strategy & Operations Latitude is an early-stage payments fintech building modern infrastructure for global money movement. We help businesses move value instantly, securely, and with full compliance, leveraging local payment rails and blockchain settlement while delivering a seamless, enterprise-grade experience. Our team has built and scaled payments and financial infrastructure at Uber, Coinbase, Stripe, Amazon, and Facebook, bringing deep experience across fintech, marketplaces, and global-scale systems. In January 2025, we raised an $8M seed round led by NEA, with participation from Lightspeed Faction, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos, Bitso, Solana Ventures, and others. We're looking for a Head of Strategy & Operations to work directly with the CEO, set how the company runs, lead our operational teams, and personally drive the work that matters most in any given quarter. Location: NY or Houston, TX The Role This role reports to the CEO and will be responsible for enabling Latitude to execute faster than a company our size should, running the operational teams, and being a strategic partner to the CEO. On any given week, you might be building the board deck, sitting in on a support escalation, modeling corridor economics for a new market, and unblocking three projects that stalled because nobody owned the next step. It is a deliberately broad role. We want a strong strategic thinker, but this is not a pure strategy job. Roughly half of it is running the operating cadence and managing the ops teams; the rest is analysis, executive materials, and the problems that land on the CEO's desk and need to be owned by someone else. If you want to think without also executing, this isn't the role. You'll have the opportunity to: Run the operating system of the company. Own planning, goals, and the weekly and monthly cadence that connects them. Make sure decisions are made, written down, and executed. Chase the ones that don't. Automate where possible. Manage our operations teams. Customer support, product operations, and compliance operations report into you. Own service levels, staffing, tooling, and escalation paths as transaction volume grows. Own the executive workstreams. Board decks, investor updates, all-hands, and preparation for the meetings that matter. When the CEO hands you a problem, you take it end-to-end and come back with it finished. Do the analysis behind the decisions. Corridor economics, pricing, partner performance, build-versus-buy, and market entry. Bring recommendations with a point of view, not just the data. Support product with strategy. Partner with product on prioritization, market sizing, and competitive positioning. Be the connective tissue between what customers are telling operations and what engineering is building. What We're Looking For Required 8+ years across strategy and operations : business operations, strategy and ops, general management, or a senior generalist role reporting directly to a founder or CEO at a high-growth company. A consulting or banking foundation is welcome if you've since operated. A track record of execution. You are known as the person who closes loops. You can point to messy, cross-functional work that landed because you drove it. People management experience. You've directly managed operational teams, set service levels, and hired into them. Analytical rigor. You own your own data, are comfortable in SQL or the equivalent, and are able to build a model in a spreadsheet without an analyst layer. Board-quality materials. You can write a memo and build a deck that a sophisticated investor takes seriously. Payments, fintech, or crypto context. You can hold a conversation about settlement, FX, or licensing without translation. Comfort in regulated environments. Compliance is a constraint you design around, not a department you route around. Startup muscle and low ego. You've worked somewhere small and fast, and you're willing to do the unglamorous work yourself. Preferred Experience as an executive’s direct partner on company-wide execution at a high-growth startup Experience scaling a customer support or operations function through a period of rapid volume growth International or multi-market operating experience, particularly Latin America, Africa, or Southeast Asia Experience with board reporting, investor updates, and fundraising support Fluency with AI-assisted workflows and automation tooling for operational work Why Latitude? Rare leverage. Early hires at companies like this are rare. You'll own your function from day one, with direct access to the founders and no layer between you and the decisions. Infrastructure that matters. We're taking on a massive market with real traction behind us, building the rails that make global payments faster and more accessible. And you'll do it alongside a team that has already built this system category at Stripe, Coinbase, Uber, and Facebook. Benefits At Latitude, we believe success starts with our people: healthy, inspired, and empowered to thrive both in and outside of work. We offer: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance with generous company contributions Meaningful early-stage equity and a 401(k) Unlimited PTO and 10 paid federal holidays Latitude is an equal opportunity employer committed to building an inclusive workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.