Senior Director, Decision Analytics & Risk Strategy

Payactiv, Inc.; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 240,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401K with company match

Tuition assistance

Unlimited PTO

Gym reimbursement

Volunteer time off

Paid Family Leave

Office lunches

Career growth

Job summary

Payactiv, a FinTech company in Silicon Valley, seeks a Senior Director of Decision Analytics to lead the risk decisioning function for our Earned Wage Access products. Based in Milpitas, you will guide data-driven decisions impacting growth and loss performance across products.

Role requires 8+ years in consumer fintech risk, strong SQL/Python, and a proven ability to lead analytics teams. You will partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, and Compliance to deliver scalable risk solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative discipline; advanced degree preferred.
• 8+ years of experience in consumer credit risk, risk analytics, or decision science, including 3+ years leading analytics teams.
• Direct experience owning risk at a consumer fintech — earned wage access, cash advance, BNPL, or near-prime consumer lending — strongly preferred.
• Proven track record of owning risk decision strategy and loss outcomes at scale, with U.S. workers experience.
• Hands-on experience debiting consumer financial instruments at scale across methods (ACH, debit, real-time rails).
• Hands-on technical depth in SQL and Python, with knowledge of modern ML approaches to risk modeling.
• Executive-level communication skills to distill risk trade-offs for C-suite and board audiences.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the risk decision strategy for Payactiv’s product offerings, balancing access, growth, and loss performance.
• Own end-to-end risk decisioning strategy: eligibility criteria, limits, repayment risk models, debit and recovery strategies, portfolio management.
• Build loss forecasting, vintage and cohort analysis, and unit-economics frameworks; report portfolio metrics to leadership.
• Build and mentor a high-performing team of risk data scientists and analysts.
• Champion a test-and-learn culture, design and run experiments to expand access while controlling losses.
• Establish model governance standards: documentation, validation, monitoring, controls.

Skills

SQL

Python

Risk analytics

Leadership

Executive communication

Experimentation

Financial risk

Education

Bachelor's degree in Quantitative field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

SQL tooling

Python libraries

Job description

Payactiv, a FinTech company in Silicon Valley, seeks a Senior Director of Decision Analytics to lead the risk decisioning function for our Earned Wage Access products. Based in Milpitas, you will guide data-driven decisions impacting growth and loss performance across products.

Role requires 8+ years in consumer fintech risk, strong SQL/Python, and a proven ability to lead analytics teams. You will partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, and Compliance to deliver scalable risk solutions.