Regulatory and Licensing Program Manager

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. Circle’s platform includes the world’s largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet. Enterprises, financial institutions, and developers use Circle to power trusted, internet-scale financial innovation. Learn more at circle.com.

What you’ll be part of:

Circle is committed to visibility and stability in everything we do. As we grow as an organization, we're expanding into some of the world's strongest jurisdictions. Speed and efficiency are motivators for our success and our employees live by our company values: High Integrity, Future Forward, Multistakeholder, Mindful, and Driven by Excellence. We have built a flexible work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.

What you’ll be responsible for:

Circle is looking for a Regulatory and Licensing Program Manager to drive our licensing applications from filing strategy through to approval. Every new license, registration, or charter is a multi-month program on a regulatory clock, and it pulls in work from teams across the company. You will have early visibility into sensitive business and regulatory decisions. Handling that information with discretion is a core part of the role.

This is a program management role that requires real regulatory depth. You will run several applications at once and set the standard every future one follows. Regional policy and legal leaders own the strategy and the regulator relationship; you make the program move. In practice that means deciding what happens in what order, putting a name against every task, and getting the executive steering committee what it needs before it meets. We use AI heavily on this team and expect you to do the same. It is how a portfolio this wide stays manageable.

You will see every market Circle is considering before the decision is made, and you will be in the room with the people making it. How this function works is largely yours to define, and you will do it as an individual contributor leading by influence.

What you'll work on: 

• Supporting Circle's licensing applications end-to-end, from the case for entering a market through to approval, running several programs at once.
• Building the program plan for each market – sequencing, dependencies, owners, dates – and holding it as the plan everyone works from.
• Partnering with cross-functional teams, including Legal, Commercial, Compliance, Finance, Treasury, Product, Engineering, People & Workplace, and others to turn regulatory requirements into executable plans.
• Facilitating working sessions and executive steering committee briefings that drive programs forward, from setting the agenda and framing decisions to closing the loop on outcomes.
• Tracking and managing risks across all active programs, owning the escalation path and getting the right people involved early.
• Defining and managing the reporting and metrics that give senior leadership and cross-functional partners an accurate, up-to-date picture of every market in the portfolio.
• Establishing and evolving scalable service standards for how Circle runs regulatory and licensing programs.
• Supporting, as directed, in external procurement activities across scoping, contracting, budget, and delivery.
• Strengthening how the global policy organization works: bringing the same discipline to consultations, submissions, briefings and events, and to whatever else the team needs run well.
• Serving as the go-to for program management across the global policy organization, setting the standard for how programs are run and helping team members strengthen their approach to planning, communication, and execution.

What you’ll bring to Circle: 

Core Requirements:

• 7+ years of program or project management experience, including at least 4 years supporting regulatory, licensing, legal or compliance work at a financial services, fintech or similarly regulated company.
• Direct involvement in at least one licence, registration, or charter application, from early requirements to submission, or in a regulatory examination or remediation carried end to end.
• Experience delivering complex, multi-month programs with many dependencies and a deadline you do not control.
• The ability to hold senior colleagues to commitments you have no authority to enforce, and to raise a risk before it is comfortable to do so.
• Daily, practical use of AI in your own work. You reach for it first on research, analysis, and internal reporting, and you know where a person still has to check the output.
• A track record of building with AI, not only prompting it. You have shipped reporting workflows, automations, or internal tools that other people use, in environments like Claude, Vibebox or equivalent.
• Strong written communication. You can turn a large set of inputs into a one-page status that an executive can act on.
• The discipline to follow a requirement all the way to close, and sound judgment with confidential and privileged material.
• Flexibility on working hours to support licensing and regulatory activity across time zones, from regular engagement with regulators in other regions to occasional deadline- or regulator-driven demands outside normal business hours.
• Familiarity with generative AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) and prompt development.

Preferred Requirements:

• Familiarity with the regulatory questions specific to stablecoins and digital assets: reserve composition and attestation, redemption, safeguarding of customer funds, and the payments, e-money and virtual asset regimes that govern them.
• Experience working with one or more high-bar financial services regulators in any major jurisdiction.
• Fluency in an additional language.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience.
• Experience/familiarity with Slack, Apple MacOS and GSuite.

Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.

Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.

Base Pay Range: $140,000 - $170,000

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status required by the laws in the locations where we hire. Additionally, Circle participates in the E-Verify Program in certain locations, as required by law.

Should you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to [email protected] for support. We respect your privacy and will connect with you separately from our interview process to accommodate your needs.

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