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Head of Fraud Operations

Cardless· Risk
Apply on company site
San Francisco$170k - $230kFull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Head of Fraud Operations to build and lead the operational core of Cardless' fraud function, combining hands-on case work with team leadership to scale manual review and investigations.

Responsibilities

  • Build, manage, and develop a team of fraud analysts and investigators: responsible for hiring, onboarding, training, scheduling, and performance management.
  • Create a high-performance team culture grounded in accuracy, accountability, and continuous learning.
  • Define clear performance standards, quality metrics, and career paths for analysts and investigators at each level.
  • Serve as a player-coach: you'll be hands-on in complex cases, calibration sessions, and quality reviews — not just managing from a distance.
  • Own the day-to-day execution of the manual review program for onboarding and account-level events, ensuring queues are managed, SLAs are met, and case quality is high.
  • Work closely with the Fraud Strategy – Onboarding team to operationalize routing logic, decision criteria, and escalation paths; translate policy into analyst-ready playbooks and SOPs.
  • Monitor analyst decision quality through regular audits and calibration; identify training gaps and address them quickly.
  • Evaluate the tools analysts use to conduct reviews — surface gaps, advocate for improvements, and partner with vendors and Engineering to close them.
  • Track and report on manual review performance: throughput, SLA adherence, decision accuracy, reversal rates, and downstream fraud on reviewed cases.
  • Own the fraud investigations function: responsible for scoping, working, and closing cases involving complex fraud patterns, suspected fraud rings, account takeover events, and high-loss incidents.
  • Define investigation methodology and standards: how cases are triaged, documented, escalated, and resolved.
  • Lead investigations on high-severity or high-exposure cases personally; ensure the team has the skills, tools, and access needed to investigate effectively.
  • Partner with the Fraud Strategy – Transactions team to feed investigation findings back into detection rules and model features.
  • Maintain SAR filing readiness and ensure the team understands BSA/AML obligations related to fraud investigations; coordinate with Compliance on filing decisions.
  • Build and maintain the SOPs, playbooks, and decision frameworks that enable the team to operate consistently and independently.
  • Identify automation and tooling opportunities that reduce manual effort, improve decision consistency, and increase analyst capacity.
  • Define and own the operational KPI framework: queue volume, SLA performance, case resolution time, analyst productivity, and quality scores.
  • Build reporting and dashboards that give leadership and strategy teams real-time visibility into operational health.
  • Partner with Fraud Strategy Managers (Onboarding and Transactions) to ensure operational execution stays aligned with policy intent; surface operational friction that should drive policy updates.
  • Work with Product and Engineering to prioritize and shape the fraud ops tooling roadmap: case management, analyst workstations, investigation tooling, and workflow automation.
  • Collaborate with Customer Operations on cardholder-facing workflows stemming from fraud decisions: hold communications, account restriction notices, and reinstatement processes.
  • Engage with Compliance and Legal on SAR obligations, regulatory inquiries, and fraud-related policy requirements.

Qualifications

  • 7–12 years of experience in fraud operations, fraud investigations, or related functions at a financial institution, fintech, or payments company.
  • 3+ years of people management experience, with a track record of building and developing high-performing fraud operations teams.
  • Deep hands-on expertise in manual review operations — queue management, case adjudication, SLA design, and analyst tooling.
  • Strong background in fraud investigations: experience scoping and leading complex investigations involving ATO, fraud rings, synthetic identities, or high-loss events.
  • Experience building and maintaining operational SOPs and playbooks that enable teams to scale.
  • Strong SQL skills and comfort using data to monitor performance, identify trends, and drive operational decisions.
  • Excellent communication skills: you can write a crisp SOP and present operational performance to executives with equal ease.
  • Proactive, bias-to-action mindset: you identify problems before they escalate, align teams quickly, and execute with urgency.

Skills

Required:Fraud operations leadershipSQL

Benefits

  • Meaningful Start-up equity
  • 100% health, vision & dental primary coverage
  • 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage
  • Catered lunches
  • $250/month Commuter benefit
  • Parental leave
  • Team building events & happy hours
  • Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year
  • Apple equipment
  • 401k plan
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Cardless

Build credit into your product experience.

Build credit into your product experience. Run it end to end with modular APIs, pre-built components, analytics, and full-service infrastructure.

Credit card platformAPIEmbedded finance
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