Fraud Strategy and Operations 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 Coinbase, 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.

The Job

We're looking for a Fraud Strategy and Operations Lead to join our team and build a world-class fraud prevention operation. In this role, you’ll manage a team responsible for day-to-day fraud operations while shaping strategic initiatives. You’ll leverage data-driven insights to optimize workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and improve operational efficiency for the team.

Reporting to our Head of Fraud, you will help to scale our fraud capabilities from handling thousands to millions of transactions as Cardless grows 10x in the next year. This is a hands-on role in a fast-paced environment where your operational expertise and strategic thinking will have a direct impact on how Cardless grows securely and sustainably.

Responsibilities:

• Own day-to-day fraud operations: Manage application reviews, transaction monitoring, and fraud investigations. You'll own the processes that keep fraud losses below target thresholds while maintaining a seamless customer experience, including monitoring real-time transactions, managing case queues, and ensuring timely resolution of flagged applications.

• Build the fraud team: Help build and lead a team of fraud analysts. You'll be responsible for training and performance management while creating the SOPs and playbooks that enable the team to operate independently.

• Strategy Execution & Optimization: Implement fraud detection strategies across customer onboarding and transaction monitoring. Work with identity verification vendors, and risk engines to deploy and optimize fraud rules and models. Utilize SQL and data analytics to identify emerging fraud patterns, automate workflows, and continually enhance operational efficiency as we scale.

• Partner cross-functionally: Partner with Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Customer Service to embed fraud prevention into the customer experience. You'll translate high-level strategy into actionable processes, ensuring fraud controls scale with the business while maintaining high approval rates for legitimate customers.

• Portfolio Monitoring: Conduct regular portfolio reviews to track fraud trends, loss rates, and detection performance. Adjust policies and controls based on data-driven insights to strike a balance between fraud prevention and customer trust.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience leading fraud operations.

• 1+ years of managing teams of 3–10, with proven experience in training, scheduling, and performance management.

• Strong ability to create clear processes that enable teams to operate efficiently.

• Strong project management skills and a track record of driving results.

• Proficiency in SQL and experience using data to optimize operations, track performance, and identify bottlenecks.

• Excellent execution skills and experience turning high-level strategy into detailed operational workflows.

• Proactive, bias-to-action mindset: ability to ask clarifying questions and ensure alignment across teams.

• Technical aptitude: you don't need to code, but you should be comfortable working with engineers and bridging technical and non-technical teams.

• Excellent communication skills: you can explain complex concepts to diverse audiences.

Nice-to-have: Experience in fintech, payments, or financial services is a plus but not required.

Compensation

This role has an annual starting salary range of $130,000 - $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.