Customer Operations Lead

About the role

You will ensure lemon.markets delivers a fast, reliable, and compliant customer lifecycle so our partners can launch and scale investment products with confidence. Sitting in the 1st Line of Defense (1LoD), you'll lead Customer Ops, KYC Ops, and AFC Ops and make sure day-to-day operations run smoothly while meeting regulatory expectations.

What you'll do

• Develop and lead a team of FTEs and working students across Customer Ops, KYC Ops, and AFC Ops, setting clear expectations, coaching, and building a high-ownership culture.
• Run and improve day-to-day performance across the lifecycle by steering SLAs, backlogs, cycle times, quality, and rework, ensuring customers and partners get predictable, reliable outcomes.
• Establish an operating system for the area (daily/weekly reviews, capacity planning, queue/skill management) that makes priorities, bottlenecks, and decisions transparent.
• Own and evolve KYC operations (onboarding, verification, document checks, remediation, periodic reviews where relevant) with strong QA standards, sampling, and root-cause work to reduce KYC aging and risk.
• Own AFC case & alert operations including evidence collection, escalation logic, and audit trails to ensure defensible decisions and strong audit readiness.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and 2LoD to translate regulatory and operational needs into scalable workflows, permissions, logging, and controls and ensure every change is operationally ready.
• Lead automation initiatives across the whole Ops function by eliminating manual work through workflow automation, decision engines, etc. driving efficiency, consistency, and faster turnaround times.
• Own vendor management and communication, ensuring external partners/tools meet requirements for performance, scalability, and auditability.

What you'll need

• Multi-year operations experience in a regulated environment (FinTech/Banking) having hands-on expertise across Customer Service Ops, KYC Ops, and AFC Ops. Brokerage experience is a strong plus.
• Proven people leadership experience (coaching, performance management, hiring and capability building).
• Strong track record in performance management (SLA steering, QA frameworks, backlog & capacity planning).
• Excellent at cross-functional stakeholder management with Product & Engineering (requirements, change management, rollouts) and experience working with a 2nd Line of Defense.
• Hands-on and structured. You like turning ambiguity into operating cadence, clear priorities, and measurable outcomes.
• Fluent in German and English, and comfortable communicating with internal and external auditors.

What they offer

• Competitive salary based on your experience and value-add
• Flexible working hours with core collaboration hours 12:00-16:00
• Hybrid work setup in Germany with 7+ days per month on-site in Berlin office
• Personal development mentorship, career framework, and annual learning budget
• Deutschlandticket sponsorship and 50% off Beatvest financial education
• Workation: up to 10 consecutive days and 60 days per year across the EU