Head of Legal, Risk and Compliance

About Quartz

Quartz is reimagining wealth management through personalised intelligence. It's the first wealth platform that truly learns from you, understands your goals, and helps you make confident, informed decisions all in one secure platform. Get the experience of a personal banker that works with you 24/7, at a fraction of the cost.

About the role

We're looking for our Head of Legal, Risk and Compliance to own how Quartz operates as a regulated firm, from the FCA permissions we hold today to the ones we're applying for next.

This is a player-coach role: you'll be the Senior Manager accountable for compliance oversight, the FCA's primary point of contact at Quartz, and the strategic partner the rest of the team turns to on the harder regulatory calls. The decisions you make in the first six months — which advice permissions to pursue, how we govern our AI advisor's advice, how we build our risk framework — will define what Quartz can do for clients for years to come.

This role is for someone who excels at first principle thinking, has sat inside an FCA-authorised consumer FS firm before, and is comfortable pulling apart the established playbooks of private banking and compliance to rebuild them for an AI-native world. If you're looking to do meaningful work and you're not driven by a nine to five mentality, you might be just who we're looking for.

What you'll be doing

Owning regulatory, corporate, commercial, employment and IP matters across the group
Owning the FCA relationship and the firm's SMCR governance as our Senior Manager for Compliance Oversight
Driving authorisations strategy and leading applications end-to-end
Designing how Quartz proves our AI advisor is safe, suitable and compliant, working hand-in-glove with product, engineering and ML
Building a proportionate risk framework across regulatory, operational, financial-crime and information-security risks
Managing external counsel relationships and bringing things in-house as we scale

What you'll need

UK-qualified solicitor, or equivalent senior compliance leader, with 5+ years in financial services regulation
Eligibility for FCA SMF approval (SMF16 Compliance Oversight, SMF17 MLRO); existing approval is a strong plus
Track record at consumer-facing fintech firms - wealthtech, neo-bank, retail brokerage, private bank or platform
Strong grasp of UK regulatory frameworks (FCA Handbook, SMCR, Consumer Duty, MiFID II, AML)
Comfort operating where the rulebook hasn't fully caught up with the product, particularly around AI, advice and consumer protection
First principle thinker: treats compliance as a strategic function, not a control function
Fluency in English

Nice to have

Existing FCA SMF approval (SMF16 or SMF17)
Background in private banking, wealth management or wealthtech
Experience with the FCA Regulatory Sandbox or Innovation Pathways