About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is the unified platform for embedded finance, built for modern issuing, acquiring, credit, ledger, and real-time money movement. With an integrated ledger, full program management, and a purpose-built architecture, we help companies design financial products around their customers and launch faster with greater control.

We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees across 25+ US States, with headquarters in San Francisco. Along the way, we’ve built one of the most experienced payments teams in the industry.

We’re fast-moving and hands-on, and we believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. Our values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, guide how we build the payment products of tomorrow's business needs. We’re looking for people who want to help shape the future of payments.

Job Description

This is a leadership role for a finance leader who wants to shape the direction of a high-growth payments company. Reporting to the COO and partnering closely with the CEO and the rest of the leadership team, you will be the person who looks ahead, reads what the numbers are telling us, and proactively lays out the financial moves the company should make. You will not wait to be asked for analysis. You will bring it, defend it, and help us act on it.

Payments is a business of fine margins and constant tradeoffs, where economics, mix, and cost all move together. We are looking for a leader who understands those dynamics, sees around corners, forms a clear point of view, and turns it into recommendations the leadership team can act on with confidence. You will also stand behind those numbers when it counts, including with our auditors, where your judgment and the integrity of our reporting matter.

We want someone who is genuinely forward-leaning on technology and AI, and who will use it to transform how our financial operations run. The goal is to take our analysis to the next level, using automation and AI to produce sharper, faster, and deeper insight and to give the team more room for the thinking that moves the business, all while preserving the auditability and control our reporting depends on.

What you will own

Financial and analytical leadership.

Proactively analyze the business, spot where we are heading financially, and recommend the steps we should be taking, ahead of being asked.
Own the strategic financial narrative: what is driving performance, what it means for the plan, and where the risks and opportunities are.
Run scenario and sensitivity work so leadership can see the financial impact of major decisions, new products, and customer changes before they are made.
Be a genuine partner to the CEO and COO, translating financial reality into clear, defensible guidance that shapes company decisions.

Planning and reporting.

Guide the annual operating plan and regular forecasting, working with the team that runs the day-to-day modeling, and hold the overall view of revenue, gross profit, operating expense, and burn.
Deliver a clean, insightful reporting package to the leadership team and the board that explains what happened, why, and what we should do about it.

Capital, burn, and treasury.

Manage burn and runway with a clear point of view on where spend earns its keep and where it does not.
Own cash flow, treasury, and banking relationships, and support debt facilities and covenant compliance.
Support equity and debt fundraising with the model, the diligence materials, and the analysis investors will expect.

Controls and audit.

Partner with the Controller, who owns the monthly close and tax, to keep reporting accurate, timely, and audit-ready, and to strengthen internal controls as we scale.
Stand behind the company's financial positions and judgments with our external auditors, and defend the decisions we make when they are examined.
Keep financial reporting compliant with GAAP and appropriate for our size and phase.