Director of Risk Operations

About the role

As Director of Risk Operations, you will own end-to-end operational fraud prevention and risk review across both our merchant and customer portfolios. You will lead a team of six Fraud Investigators, setting the direction, building the processes, and developing the capabilities that allow Koalafi to scale its fraud prevention function as the business grows. This is a hands-on leadership role at a company of ~220 people, meaning you will be both a strategic owner and an active contributor. You'll be expected to roll up your sleeves - diving into complex investigations, designing workflows, writing documentation, and coaching your team - while simultaneously thinking about how the function needs to evolve over the next 12-24 months. The right person for this role sees process excellence and technology adoption not as administrative overhead, but as the core levers for building a fraud operation that punches above its weight. You are genuinely excited about AI and actively experimenting with how it can be applied to fraud workflows - not as a future aspiration, but as something you are doing right now.

Responsibilities

• Merchant Underwriting
• Oversee the risk assessment and approval process for all new merchant partners during onboarding
• Ensure the team is consistently applying sound underwriting judgment to evaluate merchant legitimacy, business quality, and fraud risk
• Develop and maintain underwriting standards, decision frameworks, and documentation that create consistency and auditability across the team
• Identify patterns in merchant approvals and denials that can inform policy improvements over time
• Merchant Fraud Reviews
• Lead the ongoing monitoring and investigation of approved merchants exhibiting suspicious activity or abnormally poor account performance
• Build and refine the triggers, workflows, and escalation paths that govern when and how merchants are reviewed
• Own merchant disposition decisions - clear, escalate, restrict, or terminate - and ensure those decisions are well-documented and defensible
• Collaborate with Sales and Account Management on difficult merchant situations requiring cross-functional coordination
• Proactive Customer-Level Fraud Reviews
• Oversee the review of customer applications flagged at medium risk levels - cases that scored above automatic approval thresholds but below automatic decline thresholds
• Ensure the team is applying consistent investigative standards using available tools including application data, internal systems, and third-party fraud prevention platforms
• Continuously evaluate queue volumes, disposition rates, and outcomes to identify opportunities to sharpen automated decisioning and reduce manual review burden
• Reactive Customer-Level Fraud Reviews
• Own the intake and resolution process for inbound fraud claims, disputes, and complaints submitted through escalation channels
• Ensure timely, accurate, and compliant handling of all reactive cases in accordance with regulatory requirements and internal SLAs
• Identify systemic patterns in reactive volume that signal upstream process gaps or emerging fraud typologies
• Post-Funding Account-Level Reviews
• Manage reviews triggered by suspicious activity at the account or customer level after funding has occurred
• Develop and refine the signals and rules that trigger post-funding review
• Collaborate with Fraud Analytics to ensure post-funding findings feed back into model development and strategy
• How You'll Lead
• Team leadership: Directly manage a team of six Fraud Investigators, providing day-to-day coaching, structured feedback, and clear performance expectations
• Process development: Design, document, and continuously improve the workflows, decision frameworks, and standard operating procedures that govern every review type under your scope
• Training : Build and maintain a training program that onboards new investigators effectively and keeps the existing team sharp as fraud typologies and tools evolve
• Quality assurance : Establish a QA process to monitor decision consistency, catch errors, and create a feedback loop that raises the team's overall standard
• Cross-functional collaboration : Work closely with Fraud Analytics, Compliance, Sales, Operations, and Product to ensure Risk Operations is well-integrated

Benefits

Additional Information

At Koalafi, we believe in a world where no one has to put an important purchase on hold. That's why we're making it easier for more people to pay for big purchases over time. Retailers across the country rely on us to offer flexible lease-to-own financing to their non-prime consumers, while increasing sales and strengthening customer loyalty. Their 2M+ customers love us because we provide a flexible way for them to make payments and give them an opportunity to improve their credit. Our 200+ Koalafi teammates enjoy inspiring and challenging work that accelerates their careers. Interested in learning more about how we're transforming the financing experience and joining our team?

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