Chief of Staff

About Direct Lending

Direct Lending is a profitable, regulated Malaysian fintech providing simple and responsible financing to bank-credit underserved Malaysians for essential needs — car repairs, motor takaful, and medical bills — and to the merchants that serve them.

We have been profitable for nine consecutive years, hold a KPKT moneylending licence, are Shariah-compliant, and are working toward IPO readiness by 2030. Our loan book has grown 6x in the last two and a half years. We have disbursed to more than 60,000 customers across a network of 3,000+ merchants.

In addition to our balance sheet lending, we also provide Loan-as-a Service to our business partner, leveraging on the hands-on credit experience built over the past 10 years.

The Role

This role exists because there is work in the business that doesn't belong to any single function — and it currently sits with the CEO/Founder.

You will own the operational delivery of our Loan-as-a-Service programme, and take on the cross-functional problems, projects, and initiatives that fall between our commercial, credit, finance, and product teams.

You will have no direct reports. You will work with and through every function in the business — commercial, credit, collections, finance, product, and technology. You will get things done because you are clear, credible, and trusted, not because anyone reports to you.

This is a role for someone who wants a functional leadership seat in two years and knows that the fastest way there is to spend those two years seeing the whole business. You will report directly to the Founder and CEO.

What You Get

• Work directly with the Founder and CEO on the problems that matter most in the business
• A front-row seat as a profitable business scales — the decisions, the trade-offs, and the mistakes, up close
• Involvement in strategic and new business initiatives as they emerge
• Exposure to what actually goes into IPO preparation, three years before it happens
• A defined path: this is an 18–24 month role, after which we expect you to move into a functional leadership seat or a materially larger scope

What You'll Own

A. Loan-as-a-Service delivery (approximately 30–40% of your time)

We run a Loan-as-a-Service programme for a corporate partner, with dedicated credit and collections teams supporting it. What it doesn't have is anyone coordinating across those teams and product when something needs to change.

• Run the operational rhythm across credit, collections, and product for the programme
• Be the internal escalation point when something isn't working
• Scope and drive system or process enhancements — write the brief, get it prioritised, see it land
• Track performance and flag issues before they become client issues
• Support the CEO, who holds the client relationship, with the operational substance behind it

B. Cross-functional projects and initiatives (approximately 60–70% of your time)

• Take on problems that don't have a functional owner — diagnose them, decide whether they're worth solving, and drive them to a conclusion
• Run the leadership operating rhythm: agendas, decisions captured, follow-through chased
• Handle the strategic and operational work that lands on the CEO's desk and shouldn't stay there
• Lead IPO-readiness workstreams that cut across functions

What We're Looking For

Required

• 5–8 years' experience, with at least two in an operating role — lending, banking, fintech, or a comparable environment where you were accountable for something running, not just reporting on it
• A track record of getting things done through people who don't report to you
• You do the work yourself. This role has no direct reports — you'll be in the spreadsheet, in the system, and in the room with the team, not directing from a distance
• Enough credit literacy to read a delinquency report and recognise when something is a credit problem rather than a process problem
• Enough systems literacy to write a clear enhancement brief and hold a productive conversation with engineers
• Comfortable with ambiguity — much of this role is deciding what the problem actually is
• Comfortable disagreeing with people more senior than you — and equally comfortable being told you're wrong

Not required

• Deep credit underwriting expertise — our Head of Credit owns that
• Experience with the "Chief of Staff" title specifically. If you've been an Operations Manager, Programme Manager, or Business Manager, run your own business, been an early employee at a startup, or worked in consulting and since moved into industry, you may be exactly right for this

You'll probably enjoy this if

• You have an entrepreneurial streak — you've started something, or been early at something, and you're comfortable when the answer isn't written down anywhere
• You've been frustrated by seeing problems clearly and not having the mandate to fix them
• You want to understand how a whole lending business fits together
• You'd rather solve five different problems this quarter than optimise one thing all year

You'll probably hate this if

• You want a clear job description that doesn't change
• You need formal authority to be effective
• You want to specialise deeply in one function

How to Apply

Message me directly. Please don't send a cover letter — instead, answer this in no more than 300 words:

Describe a time you had to get something done across teams that didn't report to you, where the teams initially disagreed with you or with each other. What did you do, and what was the outcome?

I read every one of these. A strong answer matters more to us than where you've worked.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.