Fraud Strategy Manager

Cardless; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful Start-up equity

100% health, vision & dental primary

75% health, vision & dental dependent

Catered lunches

$250/month Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team building events & happy hours

Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days

Apple equipment

401k plan

Job summary

Cardless is hiring a Fraud Strategy Manager to lead how we evaluate and respond to transactions across our credit card portfolio. You will shape decisioning, account takeover controls, and fraud response plans, partnering with data science, product, engineering, compliance, and operations to protect customers while maximizing valid transactions.

Reporting to the Chief Risk Officer, you will drive KPI-driven measurement, real-time monitoring, and cross-team collaboration to implement policy

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in transaction fraud strategy at a card issuer, fintech, payments network, or financial institution.
• Experience with transaction fraud decisioning across card-not-present, card-present, account takeover, payment fraud, and coordinated fraud events.
• Working knowledge of Visa, Mastercard, or Amex network rules, including authorization, chargebacks, disputes, and fraud monitoring programs.
• Familiarity with payment hold strategy and funding fraud patterns such as ACH returns, payment reversals, and bust-out behavior.
• SQL skills and experience using data to build, evaluate, and tune fraud rules and models.
• Clear communication, including the ability to explain fraud tradeoffs and recommendations to executives, network partners, and compliance teams.
• A collaborative, proactive approach: you’re comfortable acting on incomplete information, asking good questions, and bringing teams together around a decision.

Responsibilities

• Transaction decisioning: Lead the framework for approve, decline, and step-up decisions across all Cardless-issued cards, balancing fraud prevention with authorization rates and cardholder experience.
• Account takeover and changes: Design detection and authentication controls for credential compromise, SIM swap, and sensitive changes while keeping self-service easy.
• Payment risk: Set strategy for holds on ACH payments and balance transfers, detect funding fraud patterns, and define timelines and communication for customers.
• Coordinated fraud events: Build real-time monitoring and response plans for BIN attacks, merchant compromises, and fraud rings, coordinating with operations and partners.
• Measurement: Define fraud KPIs, run portfolio reviews, and build reporting to support policy updates.
• Partnership: Translate strategy into system requirements with product/engineering, ensure compliance with Reg E/Z, and support dispute workflows.

Job description

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 hiring a Fraud Strategy Manager to lead the strategy for how we evaluate and respond to transactions across our credit card portfolio. This analytical, strategy-focused role sits at the heart of how Cardless protects cardholders and manages fraud losses while keeping the card experience smooth for legitimate customers. Reporting to our Chief Risk Officer, you’ll shape transaction decisioning, account takeover and payment controls, and our response to coordinated fraud events. You’ll work closely with data science, product, engineering, compliance, and operations, and your work will directly shape how millions of cardholders experience our partners’ cards. The role is a great fit for someone who enjoys turning data into clear decisions and collaborating across teams to put them into practice.

What You Will Do

• Transaction decisioning: Lead the framework for approve, decline, and step-up decisions across all Cardless-issued cards, balancing fraud prevention with authorization rates and cardholder experience. Partner with data science to turn model scores into thresholds, segmentation, and policy.

• Account takeover and account changes: Design detection and authentication controls for credential compromise, SIM swap, and social engineering, and for sensitive changes like address, phone, email, and card reissue, while keeping self-service easy for legitimate cardholders.

• Payment risk: Set the strategy for placing and releasing holds on ACH payments and balance transfers, detect patterns like funding fraud and bust-out behavior, and define clear timelines and communication for customers.

• Coordinated fraud events: Build real-time monitoring and response plans for BIN attacks, merchant compromises, and fraud rings, coordinate the response with operations, product, and network partners, and lead post-event reviews.

• Measurement: Define fraud KPIs (fraud, false positive, decline, ATO, and chargeback rates), run regular portfolio reviews, and build reporting that supports quick policy updates.

• Partnership: Translate strategy into system requirements with product and engineering, ensure controls meet Reg E, Reg Z, network rules, and UDAAP with compliance and legal, and support dispute and ATO recovery workflows with customer operations.

What We Are Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in transaction fraud strategy at a card issuer, fintech, payments network, or financial institution.

• Experience with transaction fraud decisioning across card-not-present, card-present, account takeover, payment fraud, and coordinated fraud events.

• Working knowledge of Visa, Mastercard, or Amex network rules, including authorization, chargebacks, disputes, and fraud monitoring programs.

• Familiarity with payment hold strategy and funding fraud patterns such as ACH returns, payment reversals, and bust-out behavior.

• SQL skills and experience using data to build, evaluate, and tune fraud rules and models.

• Clear communication, including the ability to explain fraud tradeoffs and recommendations to executives, network partners, and compliance teams.

• A collaborative, proactive approach: you’re comfortable acting on incomplete information, asking good questions, and bringing teams together around a decision.

Compensation

This role has an annual starting salary range of $150,000-$210,000 + equity. 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.

Cardless is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate against applicants or employees on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.