Director of Fraud Prevention

Summary The Director of Fraud Prevention owns the fraud prevention, detection, and enforcement program across the full trader lifecycle, with direct accountability for payout integrity and chargeback/dispute exposure. This is a senior operating leadership role that requires decisive execution in a predominantly manual environment, clear ownership of outcomes, and executive-ready reporting. This role establishes baseline reporting across fraud, payouts, and chargebacks, and continuously improves the operating cadence, controls, and decision frameworks as the business scales. Key Responsibilities 1. Fraud Strategy, Policy Governance Own the end-to-end fraud strategy across onboarding, trading activity, payments, and payouts. Define and maintain fraud and abuse policies, thresholds, and enforcement standards aligned to Topstep’s trader model. Establish clear decision frameworks and escalation criteria for high-risk cases and exceptions. Continuously assess emerging fraud patterns and platform vulnerabilities and translate insights into implemented controls. 2. Fraud Operations Enforcement Lead daily fraud operations including monitoring, investigations, escalations, and enforcement actions. Design and maintain scalable manual workflows for review, approval, and enforcement that are consistently applied. Ensure fraud workflows are auditable with documented rationale for high-risk or exception decisions. Identify process gaps and operational inefficiencies and own resolution with clear timelines and measurable outcomes. 3. Payout Integrity Payout Fraud Enforcement Own fraud controls related to trader payouts, including identity verification, account integrity checks, behavioral analysis, and policy enforcement prior to payout execution. Define and maintain payout hold/release/clawback criteria, including secondary review and approval requirements for high-risk cases. Serve as the senior decision-maker for complex or reputationally sensitive payout fraud cases. Ensure payout decisions are timely, evidence-based, and consistently documented. 4. Chargeback Dispute Operations Own end-to-end chargeback and dispute operations, including intake, triage, representment strategy, evidence standards, and deadline management. Establish clear criteria for when Topstep disputes vs. accepts a chargeback, with consistent application across the team. Own chargeback reason-code discipline and technical dispute handling, including root-cause identification and corrective actions. Build and maintain dispute processing training, QA, and coaching for onshore and offshore teams to ensure consistent, defensible outcomes. 5. Payment Processing Controls Network / Processor Management Own payment processing control requirements and execution across processors/acquirers, including configuration, monitoring, and operational controls (e.g., gateway/processor capabilities). Establish monitoring for chargeback thresholds and network programs, and take proactive action to prevent breaches or penalties. Partner with Engineering to implement and maintain upstream controls that reduce downstream disputes and payout abuse. Ensure clear ownership, timelines, and follow-through on payment processing initiatives and control improvements. 6. Reporting, Analytics, Tooling Establish baseline reporting across fraud operations, payouts, and chargebacks with clear definitions, sources of truth, and cadence. Deliver executive-ready summaries that answer the question asked with clear outcomes and numbers (not raw google sheet exports). Own data quality for fraud/chargeback reporting and drive improvements to reduce reliance on ad hoc spreadsheets and manual reconciliation. Partner with Data and Engineering on tooling improvements that measurably improve speed, consistency, and auditability of fraud decisions. 7. Cross Functional Leadership Present fraud, payout integrity, and chargeback trends and recommendations to executive leadership in conc ... (truncated, view full listing at source)