Fraud & Risk Manager

Ryft is a high-growth fintech start-up building the payments platform that powers marketplaces and merchants globally. We handle the secure processing, splitting, and movement of money at scale, so our customers can focus on their business instead of the complexity of payments. We're growing fast, and every hire has a real impact on our trajectory.

We're hiring a Fraud & Risk Manager to own and lead our fraud and merchant risk function as Ryft continues to scale. This is a senior individual contributor and people manager role sitting firmly within the first line independent of second line compliance and risk oversight.

You’ll own fraud strategy end-to-end: defining and tuning detection rules in third party fraud engine, overseeing fraud monitoring, leading chargeback fraud analysis, and managing our fraud tooling vendor relationships. Alongside this, you’ll take responsibility for merchant risk monitoring and the disputes function bringing together what is currently spread across the team into a single, cohesive fraud and risk operation.

The Risk Operations function will report into you, and as transaction volumes grow you’ll be expected to build the team beneath you making the case for headcount, defining the roles, and developing the people.

This role needs someone with a specialist payments fraud background who can operate both strategically and hands-on setting the direction for how we detect and respond to fraud, while remaining close enough to the data to know when something looks wrong.

• Own Ryft's fraud strategy defining the approach to fraud prevention, detection, and response across the platform, and maintaining a clear view of the fraud landscape as it evolves.
• Lead rule definition, configuration, and ongoing tuning in our fraud engine, balancing fraud reduction against false positive rates and merchant experience.
• Monitor TC40/SAFE data and scheme fraud reporting, identifying patterns and taking proactive action to reduce exposure before it materialises in chargebacks or scheme penalties.
• Conduct in-depth chargeback fraud analysis identifying root causes, emerging fraud typologies, and merchant-level patterns that require intervention.
• Maintain and improve fraud detection playbooks, escalation procedures, and response frameworks across the team.
• Own the merchant risk monitoring function overseeing ongoing behavioural and transactional surveillance of the merchant portfolio, and acting decisively where risk thresholds are breached.
• Lead the chargebacks and disputes function, ensuring timely and accurate representment, and using dispute data to inform upstream fraud and underwriting decisions.
• Define and maintain risk thresholds and triggers for merchant-level intervention, with escalation to the Head of Risk where risk appetite decisions are required.
• Ensure merchant risk activity is accurately documented and audit-ready, in line with FCA expectations and scheme requirements.
• Own the relationship with our third party fraud vendor and any other fraud tooling or data vendors managing performance, leading reviews, and ensuring Ryft is extracting full value from its technology stack.
• Evaluate new fraud and risk tooling as the market evolves, making recommendations where capability gaps exist.
• Liaise with acquiring bank and scheme contacts on fraud-related matters, including scheme monitoring programmes and fraud reporting obligations.
• Line manage the Risk Operations function, providing day-to-day direction, development, and escalation support.
• As transaction volumes and team size grow, lead headcount planning for the fraud and risk function defining roles, making the business case, and hiring strong people.
• Build a team culture grounded…