Regulatory Compliance Manager

About Onward

At Onward, we're nurturing wellbeing - one ride, one visit, one moment of connection at a time. Our door-through-door Companion rideshare services and transportation management platform help individuals with mobility and cognitive challenges access healthcare, community resources, and daily essentials. We work with healthcare systems, PACE programs, public transportation agencies, and health plans to improve care access, reduce missed appointments, and relieve the burden of caregiving.

If you thrive in fast-moving environments, love wearing multiple hats, want to help shape a category-defining business and lead a high-performing team, we want to talk.

Reports To: COO

Pay Range: $85,000 - $105,000 + equity 

Location: 100% Remote, minimal travel

About the role

Execute the Compliance Work Behind a Growing Multi-State Technology-Enabled Transportation Network

Onward is building the infrastructure that helps people reliably access healthcare, partnering with healthcare providers and transit agencies to deliver transportation across a growing network of regulated markets.

As we expand into new geographies and programs, compliance is increasingly critical to how quickly we can launch, how reliably we operate, and how confidently we can scale.

We're hiring a Regulatory Compliance Manager to manage and execute Onward's day-to-day regulatory compliance work across new and existing markets. This is a hands-on individual contributor role working closely with Operations, Legal, Recruiting, Product, Sales, and other teams to ensure regulatory requirements are understood, translated into operational processes, completed, and documented.

This role is best suited for someone who is highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable owning complex compliance work across multiple jurisdictions and programs. On any given week, that may mean researching requirements for an upcoming launch, submitting a regulatory filing, following up on an expiring driver credential, preparing audit documentation, or improving the systems and workflows we use to manage compliance at scale.

What you'll do

Market Launch & Regulatory Readiness

• Manage regulatory readiness for new-market launches from research through operational implementation, including applicable state, county, and local requirements.
• Identify company, driver, vehicle, training, screening, permitting, reporting, and other regulatory requirements and translate them into clear operational processes, owners, controls, and timelines.
• Coordinate applications, approvals, registrations, permits, and other launch requirements with Operations, Legal, Recruiting, Product, Finance, and other cross-functional teams.
• Maintain launch-readiness plans and drive multiple compliance workstreams, dependencies, and deadlines through completion.
• Identify potential compliance risks or launch blockers early and escalate unclear, high-risk, or legally sensitive matters to Operations, Legal, or leadership as appropriate.
• Ensure required compliance documentation, approvals, permits, registrations, and other launch dependencies are complete and organized before go-live.

Driver & Ongoing Compliance

• Manage ongoing driver and vehicle compliance across active markets, including insurance, vehicle registration, driver's license requirements, background checks, required training, screenings, and other market-specific requirements.
• Monitor expirations and recurring requirements and follow up directly with drivers and internal teams to ensure requirements are completed on time.
• Maintain accurate and audit-ready compliance records across markets.
• Improve the systems, controls, trackers, alerts, and workflows used to manage compliance, with a focus on creating scalable, repeatable processes and reducing unnecessary manual work.
• Partner with Recruiting, Operations, Product, and other teams to operationalize new or changing driver compliance requirements.

Compliance Programs, Reporting & Audit Readiness

• Execute and maintain Onward's operational compliance programs in partnership with Legal and cross-functional teams.
• Implement and maintain the processes and controls needed to support applicable requirements, including areas such as non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT), Transportation Network Company (TNC) regulations, ADA requirements, healthcare partner requirements, and HIPAA awareness, as applicable to Onward's operations.
• Manage required regulatory filings, reports, registrations, renewals, permits, fees, and other ongoing jurisdiction-specific obligations.
• Maintain a centralized regulatory calendar and accurate, audit-ready documentation across markets and programs.
• Coordinate preparation for regulatory, customer, partner, and program-specific audits, managing deadlines, documentation, dependencies, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Identify compliance gaps or emerging risks, recommend practical operational solutions, and drive agreed-upon actions through completion.
• Track open compliance issues through resolution and escalate higher-risk, ambiguous, or legally sensitive matters when appropriate.
• Support the development and implementation of new compliance processes as Onward enters additional markets, launches new programs, or encounters new regulatory requirements.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in regulatory compliance, transportation compliance, healthcare compliance, safety/compliance operations, regulatory program management, or another regulated industry.
• A strong track record of hands-on compliance execution and program management, with the ability to move between detailed day-to-day work and broader cross-functional coordination.
• Experience across multiple states or jurisdictions is preferred; familiarity with transportation, healthcare, or other highly regulated environments and the systems and vendors used to support compliance is a strong plus.
• Able to read a regulation or agency requirement and translate it into a clear, repeatable operational process.
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail; keeps documentation audit-ready as a habit, not a scramble.
• Strong project management skills - able to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines, dependencies, and stakeholders at once while driving work through to completion.
• Systems- and process-oriented, with a natural inclination toward workflows, controls, trackers, automation, and repeatability rather than solving every issue manually.
• Strong cross-functional influence - able to drive timely follow-through across Operations, Recruiting, Legal, Product, drivers, and external vendors without necessarily having direct authority over them.
• A clear, plain-language communicator who can explain compliance requirements to frontline operators, internal stakeholders, and regulators.
• Enjoys solving messy, ambiguous problems and takes initiative to improve how things work, not just keep them running.
• High integrity and strong risk awareness; pairs issue identification with proposed solutions, ownership, and next steps.

Why Onward:

Onward is expanding a highly regulated, multi-state transportation network that helps people get the care they need. Every new market, partner, and program comes with its own requirements, so strong compliance operations directly support how quickly and reliably we grow.

In this role, you'll help make that growth possible. You'll support the work required to enter new markets, keep us audit-ready across the jurisdictions where we operate, and strengthen the compliance processes, controls, and systems that allow us to scale safely and reliably.

You'll build on the foundation we have today, improve how compliance requirements are tracked and operationalized, and help create more scalable, repeatable processes as Onward grows.

You'll also work across the business - partnering closely with Operations, Legal, Sales, Product, and company leadership - giving you broad exposure and real visibility into how Onward grows.

We move quickly, and not every new market comes with a playbook. If you're energized by bringing structure to ambiguity and rolling up your sleeves to make it happen, we'd love to talk.

We Offer

• Unlimited PTO
• 12 Paid Company Holidays
• 401k with 5% match
• Competitive health and benefits plans
• Employee Assistance Program
• Employee Stock