Job Title : Associate Director: Fraud Risk Strategy

Location : Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurugram

Experience : 8+ Years

Job Summary :

We are seeking a highly analytical, strategic, and leadership-oriented Associate Director - Fraud Risk Strategy to join our team. In this pivotal role, you will lead a dedicated team and be responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing fraud strategies for a leading global payments and digital wallet ecosystem.

The ideal candidate will bring strong technical expertise in SQL and Python, coupled with a deep understanding of the payment fraud industry. You will play a critical role in managing fraud losses across Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C/P2P) and Consumer-to-Business (C2B) payment flows, while simultaneously improving payment authorization rates and ensuring a frictionless customer experience

Key Responsibilities :

- Team Leadership & Mentorship : Manage, mentor, and scale a high-performing team of 5 to 10 fraud risk professionals. Foster a culture of analytical excellence, continuous learning, and accountability.

- Stakeholder Management : Act as the primary point of contact for key client stakeholders. Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Data Science, and Operations teams to align fraud strategies with broader business objectives.

- Fraud Strategy & Mitigation : Design, implement, and manage robust fraud prevention strategies for C2C (peer-to-peer) and C2B (merchant checkout) payment products, as well as Debit Card portfolios (covering both Card Present and Card Not Present transactions).

- Authorization Optimization : Analyze massive transaction datasets to improve payment authorization rates across various checkout flows (including both branded and unbranded/guest checkouts) while keeping fraud losses strictly within the risk appetite.

- Customer Experience (CX) Enhancement : Balance aggressive fraud mitigation with user experience by minimizing false positives (false declines) and reducing unnecessary friction for legitimate customers.

- Data-Driven Investigation : Investigate suspicious transaction patterns, account takeovers (ATO), and payment anomalies to determine root causes and develop proactive statistical models and rules.

- System & Rule Development : Design and deploy fraud rules within decision engines and workflow systems. Build comprehensive monitoring reports to track the performance and ROI of fraud strategies.

Required Qualifications :

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Finance, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

- 8+ years of hands-on experience in fraud strategy, specifically within Fintech, Digital Payments, E-commerce, or Payment Gateways.

- Deep understanding of Transactional Fraud, Digital Wallets, Payment Gateways, P2P transfers, and Debit Card fraud typologies. Demonstrated experience designing fraud rules using transactional, behavioral, and third-party data

- Strong proficiency in :

1. SQL : Advanced querying, joins, aggregations, and performance tuning for massive transactional datasets.

2. Python : Data manipulation (Pandas, NumPy), exploratory data analysis, and basic modeling; ability to productionize or hand over code to engineering teams.

- Proven track record of successfully managing and leading a team of 5+ analytics/risk professionals. Strong ability to delegate, guide, and review technical work

- Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to translate complex data insights into actionable strategies for executive stakeholders

- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate data insights into actionable strategies that directly impact the bottom line