Fraud & Risk Lead

At Cardless, we’re building a credit card and loyalty platform that consumer businesses use to engage their customers. We’ve launched 14 credit cards, including for Alibaba and Qatar Airways. We help businesses bring imaginative card programs to life, and have pioneered technology to embed credit card features natively into their products.

We value curiosity, humility, and intensity — we move fast and take ownership. This is a place where a motivated, resourceful individual can have an enormous impact on our trajectory. We're headquartered in San Francisco, and have raised about $90M in equity funding from top venture capital firms and angels.

We're looking for a Senior Fraud Analyst to own fraud risk mitigation analysis across all our partner card programs at Cardless. You'll be responsible for our entire risk stack, from application fraud and originations policy to transaction monitoring and account management. This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on data analysis to protect our portfolio while enabling growth. As we scale our partnerships, you'll build systems and processes that let us move fast without breaking things.

We need someone who takes ownership seriously. You'll drive open communication, tackle problems head-on, and hold the line on risk standards while balancing customer experience. You'll work within our risk appetite framework but push us to make smarter decisions as our data grows. When something goes wrong, you're the one who figures out what happened and makes sure it doesn't happen again.

Responsibilities

• Mine issuer‑level data & external signals (Visa VAA, Mastercard DI, Amex Enhanced Auth) to catch new attack patterns we're missing.

• Design rules, scorecard features, and risk models for application, transaction, and payment flows.

• Build quick ML prototypes in Python, test them against real-world scenarios, and then use our tools to put them into production.

• Set up monitoring dashboards that catch issues before they become customer experience impacts or expensive problems.

• Own fraud‑loss forecasting. Show us what's coming from rewards abuse, synthetic ID, transaction fraud, bust‑outs, and other attack vectors.

• Test new fraud tools (device fingerprinting, consortium data, biometrics) and only recommend ones that deliver real ROI

• Develop fraud mitigation strategies that maximize mitigation without damaging user experiences.

Requirements

• 7+ years working in the trenches of fraud or credit risk at card issuers or aggressive fintechs

• 4+ years writing SQL and Python/R code to solve real problems with messy, large-scale financial data

• Proven track record shipping at least one production model of transaction monitoring rules that actually catch fraud without killing approval rates

• Comfort with data visualization tools to build dashboards that tell the right story

• Experience running A/B tests that deliver actionable results

• Ability to juggle multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment where things change daily

• Clear communication skills. You can explain complex risk concepts to people who don't live in spreadsheets.

• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field is great, but we care more about what you can do than where you studied.

Who you are

• You have a track record of building great fintech products. You know what great looks like, and you love the process. Ideally you have spent time at a B2B or platform company, and understand what it means to build a platform (not custom software)

• Attention to detail. You care about making really great things – and can think through problems at a deep level of detail. They know that the details are where the magic happens – but they also know when to be scrappy and quick.

• Effective in high-stakes rooms. You're comfortable in conversation with a wide array of stakeholders, even when the stakes are high. You value good preparation and a positive attitude. Ideally, you have experience working with large institutional customers / stakeholders.

• Interdisciplinary curiosity. You can get "nerdy" about a wide range of topics (in fintech and beyond). You're intellectually confident and humble: you admit when you don't know something. You listen, and ask great questions.

This role has an annual starting salary range of $140,000 - $190,000 + equity + benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors, including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.

Benefits

We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in the Mission District. We're proud to offer our team excellent 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

Location

We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in the Mission District (near Dolores Park). We welcome employees who want to work from this office; we offer additional benefits to those who do (see below), and relocation assistance to those who'd like to.

We regularly bring our team together for offsites & trips, about every 2 months, both for fun and for work. We cover all travel & lodging in these cases.

A condition of employment at Cardless is being fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID prior to beginning your employment. We’ll ask you to send us a copy of your vaccination card in advance of your first day