Chief Risk Officer

Smarkets•Chicago, IL

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

Smarkets is seeking an atypical Chief Risk Officer with extensive experience in regulated businesses to support the development of its CFTC business. This senior leadership role will oversee the enterprise risk management function for the Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO). The position involves building the risk management framework from the ground up, operating it through go-live, and maturing it as the business scales. The Chief Risk Officer will report directly to the CEO and board, with support from the Smarkets UK team.

Requirements

Senior risk leader with 7+ years of senior experience in risk management, ideally within derivatives markets, exchanges, clearinghouses, or other financial infrastructure providers.
4+ years of hands-on experience owning enterprise or operational risk within a DCM, DCO, or comparable regulated market infrastructure in the United States, with direct responsibility for risk and system safeguards, not advisory or supporting experience.
Entrepreneurial mindset with a proven track record working in a small scale fast-paced creative work environment.
Deep understanding of the CFTC's risk and system safeguards expectations, including Core Principle 20 (System Safeguards), stress testing, and operational resilience requirements.
Strong background identifying and analysing technology risk, counterparty exposures, and internal control weaknesses, and translating them into a defensible, audit-ready risk framework.
Proficiency with established risk assessment frameworks (COSO ERM, ISO 31000) and control testing, applied across financial, operational, and systemic risk.
Experience partnering with the CEO and board on risk strategy, board-level governance, and risk reporting, including engagement with regulators at an institutional level.

Nice To Haves

CFA or FRM certification is desirable.
Personal interest in sports, exchanges, or trading
Experience with system safeguards testing, cybersecurity risk, and business continuity and disaster recovery planning in a regulated trading environment.
Experience engaging with self-regulatory organisations (SROs) such as the NFA, and participating in industry working groups.
Prior experience at the CFTC as a staff member or examiner, subsequently transitioning to industry, this background is highly valued.
Familiarity with event contracts, prediction markets, or similar novel futures products and their treatment under the CFTC framework.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end enterprise risk management programme for Smarkets Board of Trade (DCM): policies, controls, monitoring, stress testing and reporting, ready for go-live.
Establish and maintain risk assessment processes across market volatility and trading disruptions, technology failures and cyber threats, vendor and third-party dependencies, and compliance and internal control weaknesses.
Own Core Principle 20 (System Safeguards): embed system safeguards testing, cyber resilience, business continuity and recovery planning into day-to-day operations.
Oversee or conduct stress testing and backtesting relevant to market and technology risk, and maintain the risk register with clear escalation of significant events to the CEO and regulatory authorities.
Develop risk mitigation strategies and monitor risk indicators across all business units, including those operating across jurisdictions (for example, engineering in the UK).
Work in coordination with the CISO and Compliance to ensure regulatory and operational risk is fully embedded across the business.
Report on risk exposures and mitigation plans to the CEO, board, and designated risk committees, ensuring documentation, dashboards and controls are audit-ready and CFTC-compliant.
Contribute to incident response and recovery planning, with a focus on risk impact analysis and controls testing.