Strategy & Operations

At January, we're transforming consumer finance by bringing humanity to collections. Our data-driven products help financial institutions streamline their recovery operations while offering borrowers straightforward and compassionate solutions to regain financial stability. We're not just expanding access to credit — we're restoring dignity and giving millions of people the chance to achieve financial freedom.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a member of the Strategy and Operations team at January, you'll drive the decisions and work that directly accelerate our enterprise growth. You'll join one of the three teams: the team that turns complex client integrations into a build-once, scale-forever capability, the team that deepens client relationships and converts them into durable revenue, or the team that makes January's compliance record the competitive edge clients cite when they choose us — and the reason they continue to expand.

This role is for someone with the diagnostic instinct to see where leverage exists, the operational range to act on it, and the ambition to define how January works at scale. You'll join at a moment where our growth in regulated financial services is creating more opportunity than the company can capture operationally. The playbook for how we partner with our largest clients, prove our value in the market, and scale our capabilities hasn't been written yet. You're writing it.

YOUR IMPACT

Drive the decisions and work that compound January's growth. Own a point of view on the biggest growth levers within your domain — whether that's untapped client potential, compliance advantages competitors can't match, or implementation rigor that wins prospects. Identify the patterns in your team's work that should reshape product priorities, operational investments, or go-to-market strategy — and drive the decision before leadership has to ask. Drive the highest-leverage initiatives end-to-end, from diagnosis through adoption. Kill low-value work with conviction.

Build the systems, playbooks, and capabilities that compound. Eliminate the drag that prevents your team from focusing on the highest-value work — through automation, tooling, workflow redesign, or killing the process entirely. Turn repeat client situations into systematic capabilities so the next complex escalation, integration, or audit response gets handled faster and better because of the pattern you built, not because the right person happened to be in the room. Build the analytical infrastructure that lets your team self-diagnose. Create frameworks that turn ICs into owners and drivers so that judgment and execution don't bottleneck.

Own the named outcomes of the team you join. You'll join one of the three teams with the greatest opportunity to unlock growth — and be immediately accountable for its concrete outcomes.

• Client Strategy — Own a portfolio of client relationships and identify expansion opportunities across current segments and entirely new categories. Become the person clients call when they want to try something new. Translate what clients need next into strategic insight that shapes January's product roadmap and go-to-market priorities.
• Client Implementations — Own client integrations end-to-end, from contract review through first accounts placed, delivering launches that go live cleanly and on time. Turn every implementation into infrastructure: the patterns, templates, tooling, and runbooks that make each successive integration faster and less dependent on any single person. Align Product and Engineering on the tooling investments that compound implementation speed across all clients.
• Compliance — Own January's compliance advantage in an industry where regulatory scrutiny is constant and competitors' failures are costly — build the systems, processes, and evidence base that make our compliance posture demonstrably stronger than competitors and give Sales a concrete edge in every deal. Turn every regulatory interaction, audit, and client compliance question into source material for that competitive moat. Align Legal, Product, and Operations around making compliance a revenue lever.

These are the teams with the greatest need today, but January's growth is opening new opportunities across the business. Depending on your background and what we learn through the process, there may be other teams where your impact would be even greater.

QUALIFICATIONS

Track record of owning operational outcomes end-to-end across strategy, operations, or consulting roles — direct ownership of diagnosing problems and shipping solutions, not advisory or support.

Experience owning client relationships or client-facing delivery in a high-touch context — managing strategic accounts, leading complex technical projects, or running engagements where you were the named point of contact through both wins and setbacks.

Demonstrated ability to structure messy, incomplete data into insights that changed behavior — comfort working across multiple systems, identifying patterns across a portfolio, and quantifying business impact to drive decisions.

Experience driving outcomes that depend on teams you don't control — getting Product, Engineering, Legal, or other functions to act on your diagnosis, align on your priorities, and invest in your recommendations.

Technical fluency to build automations and operational tools without requiring engineering support — whether that's LLM-assisted workflows, automated reporting, or intelligent routing. You build solutions that teams adopt and maintain independently.

Strong preference for candidates who've operated at the intersection of strategy and execution — whether that's a management consulting background with a transition into operating roles, or experience building operationally at a high-growth startup where you owned outcomes end-to-end. Analytical depth and comfort building in environments where infrastructure was being created rather than inherited.

Familiarity with financial services, fintech, or regulatory and compliance-heavy industries is a plus.

WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO APPLY IF YOU VALUE

Collaborative Ownership beats Fiefdoms. You step into gaps without being asked. You fix issues. You seek to bring in the right people.

Speed beats perfection. You make decisions with incomplete information, iterate quickly, and course-correct based on what you learn. Fast loops beat slow ones.

Candor beats comfort. You give direct feedback because you care about people's growth. You'd rather hear a hard truth early than a polite sidestep that wastes time. Example: Last quarter, an engineer told our CEO his proposed timeline was unrealistic in a company-wide meeting — and was thanked for it.

Inputs beat outcomes. You evaluate decisions by the thinking behind them, not just results. Good process increases the odds; bad outcomes don't always mean bad decisions.

Why beats what. You diagnose before prescribing. You're more interested in root causes than symptoms, and you share context so others can make good decisions without you.

Writing beats meetings. You structure your thinking on paper. You know that clarity scales and that a well-written doc often accomplishes more than an hour-long meeting.

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We are currently hiring for this position in our New York office.

As a New York City-based company, we are dedicated to transparent, fair, and equitable compensation practices that reflect our commitment to fostering an environment where all team members are valued and supported. We encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.