Senior Risk Investigator – Fraud Incident Management, Partner Response

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California, +2 more states.

📋 Description

• Oversee the entire fraud incident response process, from detection to postmortem, for both first-party and third-party fraud.

• Serve as the incident lead or operational DRI for fraud incidents related to Mercury products, including account takeovers, card testing, BIN attacks, mule and ring activities, fraud spikes, and trends in first-party fraud.

• Activate incident response, assess impact, coordinate Fraud Investigations, Enablement, Strategy, Product, and Engineering, ensuring alignment on ownership and facts.

• Recommend strategies for containment, customer communication, reimbursement and credit decisions, account actions, and escalation procedures.

• Conduct postmortems and retrospectives, documenting root causes, control deficiencies, remediation owners, timelines, and status updates.

• Recognize incident patterns and translate them into sustainable solutions through alerts, rules, SOPs, product or tooling modifications, and training initiatives.

• Prepare incident and retrospective memos for bank partners and internal risk governance.

• Utilize AI tools to draft initial documents from raw incident data, verifying figures and claims against original data sources.

• Prepare answers for partner-bank inquiries regarding suspicious activities, investigations, and information requests.

• Act as the primary operational contact for partner-bank risk, AML, and investigations teams.

• Monitor partner requests, commitments, and change-management tasks, ensuring timely and consistent responses.

• Integrate partner feedback into Fraud Operations, Strategy, and Product controls and processes.

• Assist in audit and regulatory responses by validating accuracy, providing program context, disputing inaccurate evaluations or facts, and agreeing on action plans.

• Keep current records of evidence, SOPs, and decisions.

• Track governance issues until resolution and ensure fixes are effective.

• Mentor team members on escalation procedures.

• Incorporate incident learnings into training, scorecards, and playbooks.

• Collaborate with Strategy and Engineering on tooling and reporting to enhance incident response efficiency.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 6 years of experience in fraud investigations, risk operations, or financial crimes in a bank, fintech, or another regulated financial services organization.

• Practical experience investigating both first-party and third-party fraud cases.

• Proven experience leading or playing a key role in fraud incidents or similar high-severity events.

• Experience in assessing impact, driving cross-functional responses, making decisions with incomplete information, and conducting postmortems.

• Excellent writing skills with a record of producing accurate, defensible incident reports, regulatory or partner-bank memos, or audit responses.

• Familiarity with the operations of a regulated institution.

• Direct experience collaborating with sponsor or partner banks, regulators, examiners, or auditors.

• Strong understanding of US payment systems and fraud typologies, including ACH, wires, checks, cards, account takeovers, mule accounts, and synthetic or first-party fraud.

• Ability to extract and analyze volume, loss, and rate data using SQL or dashboard tools.

• Capability to influence cross-functional stakeholders and drive decisions to completion.

• Sound judgment regarding escalation matters.

• Experience using AI and automation to compile evidence, draft documents, summarize incidents, and maintain status reports.

• Preferred: experience with sponsor-bank or bank-partner fraud, BPO or outsourced operations, incident management tools and practices, continuous improvement or project management, and experience in high-growth fintech environments.

🏝️ Benefits

• Base salary

• Equity (stock options/RSUs)

• Benefits

• Equal Employment Opportunity employer

• Reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs