Senior Fraud Analyst
Armitage Labs · Tallinn
The role
We are hiring a Senior Fraud Analyst to take full ownership of Creem's fraud prevention program — its design, implementation, and continuous improvement. Today, parts of this work are supported by external consultants; your goal is to bring that expertise in-house and build a program strong enough that does not rely on external counsel.
The direction is clear: proactive and real-time, not retroactive. Rather than analysing losses after the fact, you will build automated controls and scenarios that detect and stop fraud as it happens - before it turns into chargebacks, network monitoring programs, or PSP escalations. You will combine hands-on data analysis with automation, and you are free to leverage third-party fraud prevention vendors wherever they outperform building in-house. In general, you are free to implement any effective technical controls, as well as in the long term hire additional resources if necessary, but considering that the approach must be pro-active you cannot over-hire and must always prioritise automated controls and measures.
What you will do
Own the fraud prevention program end-to-end. Design, implement, and continuously improve Creem's entire fraud prevention framework — strategy, controls, tooling, and processes — and act as the company's internal stakeholder on fraud and transaction risk.
Build proactive, real-time controls. Develop and tune automated fraud detection rules and scenarios, velocity checks, and prevention scenarios that act at transaction time — covering patterns typical of SaaS and AI businesses such as card testing, stolen-card usage, free-trial and refund abuse, and account takeover. In addition to a rule-based approach, we expect you to work with and implement sophisticated AI/ML models and controls.
Drive decisions with data. Analyse transaction, dispute, and merchant data to identify emerging fraud patterns, measure control performance (catch rate, false positives, financial impact), and iterate on rules and models based on evidence rather than anecdote.
Merchant monitoring and managing merchant risk. Own risk policies and procedures for merchant onboarding and ongoing monitoring, so high-risk actors are identified before they generate losses or compliance exposure, and the impact of the controls to “good” merchants is minimal.
Manage end-customer fraud. As a merchant-of-record, in addition to merchant-led risk and fraud, we are also open to end-customer fraud to protect our merchants. You have to analyse end-customer activity, relevant data points and connections in order to ensure that executed transactions are legitimate and not fraudulent.
Leverage third-party vendors and external partners. Evaluate, integrate, and tune external fraud prevention and risk tools and partners - own those relationships and make deliberate build-vs-buy decisions about where they fit in the stack.
Protect PSP and card network relationships. Design the program explicitly to keep fraud and chargeback ratios below PSP and card network thresholds (e.g. Visa and Mastercard monitoring programs), prevent fines and penalties, and keep those relationships healthy and sustainable — including automating dispute and chargeback handling and supporting responses to partner inquiries.
Document and operationalise. Maintain clear documentation of risk policies, procedures, and automated systems so the program is auditable, explainable to partners, and doesn't live only in your head.
Build in-house competence. Take over the scope currently covered by outside fraud and risk consultants, and establish the internal capability and expertise, including hire or help with hiring of necessary talent.
What success looks like
Creem runs a proactive, largely real-time fraud prevention program that you designed and own, with retroactive analysis serving only to improve controls — not as the primary line of defence.
Fraud and dispute ratios stay comfortably below PSP and card network program thresholds. Fines and penalties are avoided, not managed after the fact.
Automated controls, vendor tools, and documented procedures cover the full lifecycle: merchant onboarding, transaction monitoring, dispute handling, and audit-trailable and methodological merchant offboarding.
Fraud program and scenarios with low false-positive rates in order to ensure that the impact to legitimate merchants and end-customers is minimal.
There is no longer a need for external consultant engagement(s), because the capability now exists in-house.
What we are looking for
Solid experience (typically 5+ years) in fraud prevention, payments risk, or transaction monitoring at a PSP, Merchant of Record, acquirer, fintech, or high-volume online merchant.
Strong analytical skills: comfortable querying and analysing large transaction datasets (SQL required; Python or similar for deeper analysis is a strong plus).
Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and tuning automated fraud rules, scenarios, or risk models — you have owned controls in production, not just reported on them.
Working knowledge of card network fraud and chargeback monitoring programs, dispute processes, and the compliance expectations PSPs place on their merchants and platforms.
Experience selecting, integrating, or operating third-party fraud prevention tools, and judgement about when to rely on vendors versus building in-house.
An owner's mindset: you can take a broad mandate, structure it into a program, and deliver it with a high degree of autonomy in a small, fast-moving team.
Clear written and oral communication — able to document policies and systems, and to explain risk decisions credibly to payment partners.
Nice to have
Experience with fraud patterns specific to SaaS, AI, or digital-goods businesses (card testing, trial abuse, promo/refund abuse, reseller fraud).
Familiarity with ML-based fraud scoring and how to combine it with deterministic rules.
Exposure to 3-D Secure / SCA strategy, chargeback alert and deflection networks, and dispute automation.
Experience with merchant KYB/underwriting risk in a platform or marketplace setting.
Prior team leading and/or domain ownership experience
Why this role
This is a rare chance to own fraud prevention at platform level rather than optimise someone else's program. You will define the strategy, build the controls, choose the tools, and see the direct impact of your work in the numbers that matter — fraud losses, network ratios, and the strength of our payment partnerships. You will work closely together with the rest of the risk & compliance team onsite, with the autonomy and mandate that come with being the company's fraud authority.
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