Head of Fraud Operations
Cardless · San Francisco · $170,000–$230,000 (stated in the posting)
About Cardless
Cardless is building the infrastructure for the world's best companies to design, build, and launch financial products. Companies like Coinbase and Bilt use Cardless to create credit cards that feel entirely their own. In an industry where branded financial products usually mean shared logos and shared control, Cardless is built to disappear. Our APIs and components shape the journey from the first application to every purchase, reward, and moment of support that follows, while we handle lending, compliance, and operations behind the scenes.
In September 2025, we raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital, bringing our total funding to $170 million. The team is over 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026.
We're looking for kind, humble people with high standards and low egos. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We see what could be improved, make it so, and leave every product, system, and team better than we found it.
About the Role
We're looking for a Head of Fraud Operations to build and lead the operational core of our fraud function. This is a player-coach role: you'll lead a team of fraud analysts and investigators while staying close enough to the work to shape how cases are handled, how tools are used, and how the function scales.
Reporting to our Chief Risk Officer, you'll own two critical functions: manual review operations and fraud investigations. You will be responsible for the people, processes, and tooling that make both run effectively. You'll partner closely with our Fraud Strategy Managers to translate decisioning policy into operational reality, and with Product and Engineering to continuously improve the analyst experience and case management infrastructure.
This is a high-ownership role in a fast-growing environment. You'll be expected to drive operational excellence today while building the foundation for a fraud ops function that scales with Cardless.
What You'll Own
Team Leadership & Development
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.
Manual Review Operations
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.
Fraud Investigations
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.
Operational Excellence & Scaling
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.
Cross-Functional Partnership
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.
What We're Looking For
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.
Compensation
This role has an annual starting salary range of $170,000 - $230,000 + 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 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 Jackson Square. We’re in the office at least three days a week, and most of us are there more than that, because we do our best thinking and building together in person. We’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited to be there alongside the team.