📅 Sep 28
Build and lead Engine’s risk function by setting credit and fraud guardrails, governing risk operations, embedding controls into product decisions, and translating risk signals for business and executive leaders.
Head of Risk
📅 May 1
Risk ManagementDefiAave ProtocolRisk Governance
📜 Description
- Lead and build the Risk team, setting its direction, priorities, and standards.
- Own and evolve risk-management frameworks, policies, governance, approval thresholds, and escalation processes.
- Set standards for model risk, data governance, external risk providers, and product-specific risk reviews.
- Provide independent challenge and sign-off on collateral onboarding, material risk recommendations, and product or strategy changes.
- Review implementation of approved risk controls, track gaps and exceptions, and oversee incident response.
- Monitor protocol parameters, liquidation performance, and market structure; present risk analyses to the DAO.
🛠️ Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in risk management, with a strong preference for DeFi or crypto-native experience
- Proven experience leading and managing a risk team
- Deep understanding of the Aave Protocol: its markets, governance, parameters, and risk dynamics
- Strong grasp of market structure, portfolio risk management, and stress testing methodologies
- Experience governing risk for composable DeFi products or pooled strategies, including external protocol, liquidity, oracle, counterparty, execution and operational dependencies
- Experience working with or managing external risk service providers
- Strong sense of accountability and ownership. You take responsibility for outcomes and hold your team to the same standard
- Excellent judgment under uncertainty. You’re comfortable making consequential decisions with imperfect information
- Strong communication skills for governance proposals, risk reports, and stakeholder alignment
- Previous experience working directly with DeFi governance processes
Full job description
About us
Aave Labs began with a simple question: how do we make financial services like borrowing, saving, and earning more accessible globally?
We built the Aave Protocol, now the world’s largest and most trusted onchain lending market, connecting decentralized finance with individuals, traditional finance, and fintech.
Today, we build trusted, high-quality products that expand access to lending, credit, and savings globally
Our culture
We build trusted products that help people access and discover economic opportunities.
We hold a high bar for quality and craftsmanship. No detail is too small. Trust depends on it.
We’re a global team building products people can actually use, turning complex technology into something simple and reliable.
We stay aligned, move quickly, and think long term, while keeping teams lean and focused on impact.
About the role
We’re looking for a Head of Risk to lead the Risk team and own Aave Labs’ risk-governance framework across its contributions to the Aave Protocol and its products. You’ll coordinate with external risk service providers, set and monitor risk parameters, and provide final internal Risk sign-off on collateral onboarding, material protocol-risk recommendations, and product or strategy launches and material changes. This is a leadership role that requires deep protocol knowledge, strong accountability, and the judgment to make high-stakes decisions.
You’ll lead the Risk team and work closely with embedded quantitative, product and engineering specialists, as well as external risk providers to ensure Aave’s risk posture remains best-in-class as the protocol scales into new markets and asset classes. If you understand market structure, portfolio risk management, and the Aave Protocol at a deep level, and you’re ready to take ownership of risk at scale, this role is designed for you.
How you can make an impact:
Let’s connect if you have:
Nice to haves:
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