Fraud Strategy Manager / Senior Manager (Transaction Fraud)

Fraud Strategy Manager / Senior Manager (Transaction Fraud) 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 Manager or Senior Manager – Transaction Fraud to own the strategy that governs how we evaluate and respond to transactions across our credit card portfolio. This is a deeply analytical, strategy-forward role at the heart of how Cardless protects customers and controls fraud losses without degrading the cardholder experience. Reporting to our Chief Risk Officer, you'll define transaction-level decisioning logic across approve, decline, and step-up flows; build the control framework for account takeover, PII change events, and payment activity; and develop outburst detection strategies to catch fraud rings and velocity-driven attacks before losses compound. WHAT YOU'LL OWN Transaction Decisioning Strategy - Own the end-to-end framework for transaction-level fraud decisions: approve, decline, and conditional approval (step-up / challenge) across all Cardless-issued cards. - Design and continuously tune decision logic that balances fraud loss prevention with authorization rates and cardholder experience. - Define step-up and cardholder challenge strategies (e.g., OTP, push notification) for elevated-risk transactions, including triggers, cadence, and fallback handling. - Partner with data science to translate model scores into operational policy; define score thresholds, override logic, and population segmentation. Account Takeover (ATO) & PII Change Controls - Build and own the fraud control framework for account takeover, covering credential compromise, SIM swap, social engineering, and call center impersonation vectors. - Define detection logic and intervention strategy for high-risk account events: address changes, phone/email updates, card reissue requests, and beneficiary modifications. - Establish authentication and step-up requirements for sensitive account changes, balancing fraud prevention with legitimate cardholder self-service. - Track ATO rates, detection coverage, and false positive impact; build feedback loops to continuously refine controls. Payment Hold & Fraud Payment Strategy - Define the strategy for placing, managing, and releasing holds on payment activity (ACH payments, statement payments, balance transfers) based on fraud risk signals. - Identify high-risk payment patterns: funding fraud, payment reversal abuse, and bust-out payment behavior, and design controls to intercept them before loss is realized. - Establish clear SLAs and cardholder communication standards for payment holds to minimize friction for legitimate customers. Outburst Detection & Response - Build the detection and response framework for outburst events: coordinated fraud attacks, BIN attacks, merchant-level compromise, and fraud ring activity. - Define real-time and near-real-time monitoring thresholds that trigger outburst protocols, including auto-controls and escalation paths. - Lead the strategic response to active outbursts: scoping the affected population, applying targeted controls, and coordinating cross-functionally with Operations, Product, and network partners. - Conduct post-event reviews to extract learnings and harden detection for future attacks. Performance Measurement & Portfolio Monitoring - Define and own the KPI framework for transaction f ... (truncated, view full listing at source)