Senior Specialist, Incident Response

When high-stakes incidents strike, you are the calm in the storm. Senior Specialist, Incident Response, you will play the main part in incidents during major, complex, or reputation sensitive events. You take command of ambiguous situations, translate technical chaos into clear client and executive communication with the support of a high-performing team of Incident Response Specialists to raise the overall bar for crisis execution across the business. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Deliver proactive, cadence-based briefs to senior leaders while authoring clear, transparent external communications (status pages, app/web banners, client emails) in the Wealthsimple voice. • Bridge the gap between engineering and the business and translating system logs, error codes, and technical root causes into plain-language client and business impact. • Identify when Legal or Compliance review is required during a crisis and seamlessly weave regulatory checks into the response flow. • Serve as a chief editor for team communications, establishing playbooks and writing standards that ensure accuracy, speed, and empathy under real-time pressure. • Build a culture of psychological safety, calm, and focus: shielding responders from external noise during active incidents while keeping stakeholders aligned. • Rapidly identify who needs to be involved across Engineering, Product, CX, Legal, and Risk, anticipating downstream friction before it happens. • Navigate high-severity situations with confidence, managing executive expectations without distracting active responders. • Partner with Data Science to quantify incident impact and lead post-incident reviews to drive root-cause remediation and long-term CX improvements. WHAT YOU BRING • 5+ years in major incident response, crisis communications, or technical service operations within fintech, high-growth SaaS, or fast-paced digital product environments. You have a proven track record leading live-fire, SEV-1/P0 operational crises from inception to resolution. • Rapid, decisive judgment under pressure: You have a strong bias for action and excel at making quick, high-stakes decisions with incomplete information, knowing intuitively when to push forward, when to escalate, and when to hold. • Exceptional crisis communications & translation skills: You can digest raw system telemetry, logs, and engineer chatter, translating technical chaos into clear, empathetic client messaging and concise executive updates in real time. • Tech-native and async-first operational fluency: You are deeply accustomed to modern tech workflows (Slack, Notion, linear incident bots) and thrive in fast, distributed environments where clear, documented async alignment is essential. • Cross-functional network thinker: You intuitively map organizational ripple effects, rapidly engaging the right stakeholders across Engineering, Product, CX, Legal, Compliance, and Leadership before downstream friction occurs. • Comfort with ambiguity and chaos: You stay composed when there is no playbook, bringing immediate structure, clarity, and psychological safety to high-stakes, reputationally sensitive events. NICE TO HAVE • Educational background or formal training in Communications, Public Relations, Journalism, Legal Studies, or a related discipline (or equivalent practical crisis communications experience). • Incident tooling fluency: Comfortable navigating incident management platforms (PagerDuty, Rootly), monitoring tools (Datadog), and data tools (Preset, SQL) to understand system behavior and measure client impact. • Risk intuition: Strong intuition for compliance, legal, and reputational risk within a regulated financial institution. • Bilingualism: Fluency in both English and French. Why Wealthsimple? 🌸 Top-tier health benefits and life insurance Long-term group savings with employer match, through Wealthsimple for Business 20 vacation days, 4 wellness days, and unlimited sick and mental health days per year* 90 days away: work outside Canada for up to 90 days per year* Employee resource groups, including Rainbow (2SLGBTQ), Women of WS, and Black at WS We are a hybrid team with over 1,500 employees across North America. The people are one of the best parts of working here: you'll collaborate with incredibly talented, curious, and driven teammates who are deeply committed to doing great work. *Unlimited paid sick days, Wellness Days and the 90 day away program do not apply to certain roles.