Upstream Process Development Jobs in Virginia (NOW HIRING)

The Opportunity

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.

What You'll Own

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 into the broader business
• Escalation management: Serve as the final escalation point for complex or high-stakes cases that require senior judgment

AI and Technology

This role requires more than comfort with technology - it requires genuine curiosity and initiative in applying AI to fraud operations. You will:

• Actively experiment with AI tools (including large language models, automation platforms, and agentic workflows) to identify opportunities to improve investigator efficiency and decision quality
• Lead the evaluation and adoption of new fraud prevention technologies and third-party tools
• Work with Fraud Analytics and Engineering to scope and prioritize tooling investments that support the team
• Bring a point of view on where AI can realistically augment or automate portions of the fraud review workflow - and be willing to build and test those ideas, not just propose them

About You

 Experience

• 6+ years of experience in fraud operations, fraud investigations, or risk management within a financial services or fintech environment
• 2+ years of people management experience, with a track record of developing individual contributors
• Direct experience with merchant fraud, point-of-sale financing, or B2B2C financial products strongly preferred
• Familiarity with consumer regulatory requirements relevant to fraud and disputes (CFPB, FCRA, Reg E, UDAAP)
• Location Requirement: This position requires regular in-person attendance at one of our two office locations (Richmond, VA or Arlington, VA). Candidates must already be located within a commutable distance to either location, as relocation assistance is not available at this time.

Skills and Orientation

• Strong process improvement orientation - you find poorly documented, inconsistent workflows genuinely uncomfortable and are motivated to fix them
• Excellent written communication skills; you write clear, structured documentation that others can easily follow
• Sharp pattern recognition and investigative instincts - you can identify what's anomalous and pursue it methodically
• Comfortable making and defending judgment calls in ambiguous situations with incomplete information
• Data literate - you can work with Excel and basic reporting tools to monitor team performance and identify trends; SQL familiarity is a plus
• Collaborative and low-ego; this is a small company and you'll need to work effectively across functions without a large support structure

Mindset

• Genuinely excited about AI and actively experimenting with how it applies to your domain - not waiting to be told, but exploring on your own
• Orientation toward building scalable systems rather than heroic individual effort
• Strong sense of ethics and confidentiality - you understand the sensitivity of the information this role handles
• Comfortable having difficult conversations with merchants, internal stakeholders, and leadership
• Motivated by catching fraud and building something that makes that easier over time