Payments and Risk Operations Lead

Atoms

• $140K — $165K *
Finance & Insurance
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 4-7 years of hands-on experience in payments operations, fraud and risk, or financial operations.
  • Strong understanding of payment processing and money movement.
  • Strong analytical skills, including proficiency in SQL for data analysis.
  • Experience leading or collaborating with BPO teams and managing processor partnerships.
  • High-agency operator with excellent cross-functional communication abilities.

Responsibilities

  • Own Payments & Risk Operations end to end, driving improvements across both functions.
  • Manage the full risk portfolio including transaction fraud, chargebacks and emerging threats.
  • Act as the main contact for major fraud events and high severity escalations, coordinating responses.
  • Navigate ambiguity and operate independently with minimal oversight.
  • Lead a BPO team, setting standards and priorities for effective operations.
  • Proactively identify and resolve operational pain points before they escalate.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement coordinated risk strategies.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance with HSA options.
  • Company-paid life and disability insurance.
  • Voluntary insurance options including accident and critical illness coverage.
  • 401(k) with company contributions.
  • Discretionary vacation days and paid sick leave.
  • Paid parental leave and holidays.
  • Flexible Spending Accounts (Healthcare, Dependent Care, Commuter).
Full Job Description
About the Role

Our Payments & Risk Operations team is responsible for the day to day health, reliability, and integrity of our payments platform across the Atoms portfolio, including Otter, CloudKitchens, Picnic, Lab37, and more.

We are looking for someone to own the function end to end across both payments operations and risk operations. From a payments operations perspective, you will own the operational health of pay-ins and payouts, work through processor and merchant issues, identify recurring failure points, and improve payment reliability. Across risk operations, you will own fraud and abuse programs spanning chargebacks, account takeovers, refunds and appeasements, promotional abuse, and emerging threats.

This is a highly hands on, high agency role for someone who is proactive, accountable, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. We are looking for someone who sees an issue, digs into the details, brings the right people together, and drives it through resolution. Whether investigating a merchant escalation, working directly with a processor, analyzing trends in SQL, improving a BPO workflow, or partnering with Product and Engineering on a longer term solution, the right person will bring structure where it is needed, spot gaps early, and continuously raise the bar for how the function operates.

What you'll do
  • Own Payments & Risk Operations end to end. Set the operating agenda, identify where we need to improve, and drive the work forward across both payment operations and risk.
  • Own the full risk operations portfolio, including transaction fraud, account takeovers, chargebacks, refunds and appeasements, promotional abuse, KYC/KYB, sanctions related operations, and emerging risk vectors. Continuously evaluate where our controls need to evolve as the business and threat landscape change.
  • Serve as the central point of contact for major fraud events and high severity payment or risk escalations, including executive escalations. Take ownership of the response, bring together the right stakeholders, and drive issues through resolution.
  • Ability to operate independently and navigate ambiguity with minimal guidance.
  • Lead a BPO team responsible for frontline payment and risk operations. Set the team's SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, quality standards, and priorities, and make sure they have the context and tools needed to operate effectively.
  • Identify operational pain points before they become recurring problems. Develop a clear point of view on where processes need to change, where tooling is falling short, and where Product and Engineering investment can make the function more scalable.
  • Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including Product, Sales, Legal, Customer Success, and Customer Support to drive coordinated risk strategies.
  • Own the risk P&L, partnering with Finance and Accounting to report on loss metrics and surface key trends impacting the business.
  • Lead red team exercises in collaboration with stakeholders across the company to proactively identify vulnerabilities and stay ahead of emerging risks.


What we're looking for
  • 4-7 years of hands on experience in payments operations, fraud and risk, or financial operations, with meaningful experience across both payments and risk.
  • Strong understanding of payment processing and money movement, including pay-ins, payouts, settlement, reconciliation, and processor operations.
  • Strong analytical skills, including SQL, with experience using data to identify trends, define KPIs, and drive operational improvements.
  • Experience leading or partnering with BPO teams and managing relationships with payment processors, financial partners, and third-party risk vendors.
  • High-agency operator with strong cross-functional communication skills, a bias for action, and a proven ability to take ambiguous problems from identification through resolution.


What else you need to know

This role is based in our New York office. Atoms is a company driven by invention and continuous change - we are constantly reimagining our industries, building new products, and refining how we operate. We do our best work together. That's why all of our office-based teams work onsite, five days a week.

The base salary range for this role is $140,000 - $165,000 per year.

Actual compensation will be determined on an individual basis and may vary depending on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package. You may also be eligible for equity awards and an annual performance-based bonus.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees):
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance (multiple plans, incl. HSA options).
  • Company-paid life and disability insurance (short- and long-term).
  • Voluntary insurance: accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity.
  • Optional supplemental life insurance for self, spouse, and children.
  • Pet insurance discount.
  • 401(k).
  • Health Savings Account (HSA)
  • Flexible Spending Accounts (Healthcare, Dependent Care, Commuter)
  • Time Off policies:
    • Discretionary vacation days
    • 8 paid holidays per year
    • Paid sick time
    • Paid Bereavement leave
    • Paid Parental Leave

Benefits are subject to change at the company's discretion.
Atoms accepts applications on an ongoing basis.

Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others?

#LI-Onsite

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