Head of Product Compliance

Location: New York

Who We Are

At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.

We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.

We're united by shared goals and shared motivations se are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.

Our Values

If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.

Who You Are

You’re an experienced compliance executive with a proven ability to embed regulatory requirements into products and operational processes  combine regulatory depth with product and business acumen, balancing risk mitigation with practical, scalable enablement for customers and internal teams. You excel at operationalizing compliance through systems, automation, and cross-functional partnership to ensure our products remain both compliant and competitive.

Your Success Profile

As the Head of Product Compliance, you will lead a centralized Operations function accountable for ensuring all Justworks products and operational processes are compliant by design and aligned with evolving regulatory standards. You will elevate product compliance as a strategic differentiator, strengthening customer trust and enabling innovation in regulated domains. You will set the strategic direction and drive the operational rigor necessary to maintain compliance at scale, enabling customers to confidently meet complex payroll, tax, payments, employment, and benefits requirements.

Build

and Lead the Product Compliance Function

• Recruit, coach, and develop a high-performing team that fosters ownership, clarity, and continuous improvement.
• Define and implement the strategy, structure, and operating model for a centralized Product Compliance function.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability across product-related compliance domains, including regulatory research, product requirements, governance, and quality assurance.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and Operations to ensure compliance is intentionally embedded into product design, system architecture, workflows, and decision-making.

Drive Compliance Excellence and Product Governance

• Develop and maintain product-focused compliance frameworks and policies that ensure our offerings meet applicable federal, state, and international regulations related to payroll, tax, benefits, payments, and international employment.
• Ensure product and operational readiness for key certifications and audits (e.g., ESAC, CPEO, SOC), partnering with enterprise compliance teams where appropriate.
• Implement governance mechanisms that ensure proactive regulatory interpretation, risk identification, escalation, and resolution across product lines.

Advance Product Compliance Enablement and Automation

• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to translate regulatory requirements into product specifications, system logic, and automated controls.
• Leverage automation and AI to build scalable, auditable compliance workflows and reduce manual risk.
• Create and maintain a single source of truth for product compliance documentation, decisions, and knowledge to ensure consistency and visibility across teams.

Lead Through Influence and Vision

• Serve as the senior compliance voice in strategic decision-making, balancing customer experience, product innovation, and regulatory risk.
• Shape the narrative around product compliance as a driver of customer trust and differentiation, not just a risk function.
• Influence long-term product strategy by providing forward-looking regulatory insights, ensuring teams anticipate and build for future compliance requirements rather than react to them.

How You Will Do Your Work

As Head of Product Compliance, how results are achieved is as important as what you achieve. You’ll…