Head of Risk Ops

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Full accountability: Oversee all non-customer-facing operations across every business line, including fraud prevention, dispute resolution, back-office compliance, and processing tasks such as mail and refund handling, covering the 30+ workflows managed by the team.

• Ownership of workloads: Establish the benchmark for the operation of every back-office workload, ranging from high-stakes fraud and dispute cases to high-volume processing queues, ensuring adequate staffing, measurement, and ongoing enhancement.

• Operational rhythm: Define goals, service level agreements (SLAs), and quality benchmarks for the function; facilitate the weekly and monthly meetings that align the team and identify risks early.

• Executive liaison: Act as the primary contact for Risk operations, conveying the operational realities of fraud, disputes, and processing into understandable trade-offs for executive leadership and stakeholders.

• Regulatory compliance: Maintain the function to a standard that can withstand audits and regulatory assessments, collaborating with Legal and Compliance on FCRA, Reg Z, Reg E, SCRA, and related responsibilities.

• Team leadership (player-coach): Guide and nurture a team of Team Leads and subject-matter experts, as well as frontline investigators and analysts (Sr Risk Investigators, Risk Investigators, Risk Data Analyst). This role is hands-on and not purely managerial — you remain closely engaged with the work as the organization flattens and AI takes on routine tasks.

• Organizational structure and staffing: Manage the organizational structure, staffing model, and capacity planning for the function; make strategic decisions regarding build-vs-buy-vs-automate as volume increases.

• Talent management: Recruit, develop, coach, and retain talent; create career pathways and a pool of senior investigators and future team leads.

• Performance management: Establish individual and team performance goals, conduct calibration, and uphold quality standards through the QA rubric and review process.

• Automation roadmap: Design and implement the strategy to automate manual reviews, dispute intake and resolution, monitoring, and reporting; aim to reduce cost-to-serve and cycle time while maintaining accuracy.

• AI-enhanced operations: Collaborate with data and AI teams to implement tools that assist in triaging cases, drafting dispute responses, and identifying anomalies, allowing human resources to focus on tasks requiring judgment.

• Technology and vendor management: Oversee the fraud and dispute technology stack (Alloy, Socure, Persona, LexisNexis, Helix, Centrix, Zendesk, Peach) and the associated vendor strategy, including usage, contracts, and consolidation.

• Data integrity and measurement: Ensure the function operates on a dependable single source of truth within Databricks; establish metrics that demonstrate impact (loss rates, chargeback win rate, dispute cycle time, manual review rate, QA scores).

• Control environment: Manage the control framework for fraud and disputes; ensure QA, escalation, and documentation standards maintain defensible decision-making.

• Cross-functional collaboration: Engage with Compliance, Legal, Product, and Engineering to transform regulatory changes into operational practices and address control deficiencies before they escalate into findings.

• Risk management: Implement the company's risk appetite: Develop and calibrate systems, thresholds, and workflows that integrate Tilt's approach to fraud prevention with fair customer treatment in daily operations, serving as the escalation point for any ambiguous situations.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 8 years of experience in fraud, disputes, and overall risk operations, including more than 3 years in leadership roles — preferably with experience managing managers.

• Extensive, practical knowledge of consumer protection regulations relevant to operations: FCRA credit disputes, Reg Z and Reg E transaction disputes, and back-office obligations (SCRA, bankruptcy, handling of deceased accounts, proof of authorization).

• Proven ability to build and expand operations through process improvements and automation, rather than solely increasing headcount.

• Strong understanding of fraud typologies across card, ACH, and P2P transactions — including account takeover (ATO), identity fraud, payments fraud, abuse, and social engineering.

• Proficient in data utilization: capable of setting and interpreting operational metrics, working with SQL/BI outputs, and ensuring the team adheres to a single source of truth.

• Demonstrated success in collaborating with Compliance, Legal, Product, and Engineering teams, effectively communicating risks and trade-offs to executives.

🏝️ Benefits

• Virtual-first teamwork: The Tilt team collaborates across 14 countries and 12 time zones. You will receive a reimbursement for your work-from-home office setup.

• Competitive compensation: We value potential, reflected in our competitive salary packages and generous equity offerings.

• Comprehensive support: Access flexible health plans across various premium levels, along with significant subsidies that meet global standards.

• Visibility and exposure: You will have direct access to our leadership team — we are a culture where great ideas are recognized swiftly.

• Paid global gatherings: We believe in the power of in-person connections; we meet twice a year for shared meals or kayaking adventures. (Past locations include Vail, San Diego, and Mexico City.)

• Recognition of impact: Growth opportunities arise from your contributions rather than fixed promotion timelines.