Director, Merchant Risk & Onboarding

Bilt • New York, NY

1d • $150,000 - $180,000

About The Position

Bilt is building a payment facilitator business and carries merchant risk that a processor would otherwise assume. The Director, Merchant Risk & Onboarding owns merchant onboarding and risk decisions end to end, including the onboarding flow, KYB and beneficial owner KYC, underwriting, vendors, policy, and reporting. The role is responsible for enabling legitimate merchants to onboard quickly while preventing bad actors and maintaining readiness for sponsor bank, card network, and regulatory review as the program scales.

This is a hands-on individual contributor position. The v1 onboarding flow will be live when the hire joins. The role will spend most of the week designing and improving onboarding flows with Product and Engineering, while also reviewing applications and transactions and handling complex cases. It collaborates with Legal, Compliance, Local Merchants, Payments, Fraud, Data Science, the sponsor bank, and processing partners. As the program grows, there may be an opportunity to expand the team.

The position builds and maintains vertical-specific underwriting frameworks, tunes onboarding and fraud vendors, develops manual-review procedures, and reports on funnel and portfolio health to executive leadership and bank and network partners.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience in merchant onboarding, merchant risk, underwriting, or KYB/KYC at a payment facilitator, acquirer, processor, merchant-facing fintech, or sponsor bank.
• Hands-on track record building onboarding or merchant risk programs; high-volume SMB payfac experience or experience building a program at a smaller company is preferred.
• Hands-on experience running KYB and beneficial owner verification at scale, with working knowledge of the FinCEN CDD rule, CIP requirements, and BSA/AML fundamentals.
• Experience underwriting small and mid-sized merchants, including exposure to chargebacks, reserves, and merchant losses.
• Working knowledge of card network registration and monitoring requirements for payment facilitators and their sub-merchants, and direct experience working with sponsor banks.
• Experience with orchestration tools, KYB vendors, and identity and fraud vendors, including contracting, configuration, and performance tuning.
• Fluency in SQL and portfolio analytics, including independently pulling cohorts, interpreting approval and loss curves, and designing rules and thresholds with analysts and data scientists.
• Clear writing, sound judgment, and a preference for building things hands-on.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with restaurant, POS, property management, or retail merchant onboarding, including multi-location and franchise structures.
• Experience taking a payfac program through initial sponsor bank and network approval.
• Experience with fraud decision engines such as Sardine or SEON.
• Experience with processors such as Adyen, Stripe, Checkout.com, or Fiserv.
• Familiarity with merchant transaction monitoring and transaction laundering detection.
• Experience with ML-based or rules-based application risk scoring.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end onboarding flow for restaurants, property management partners, and retailers, from application through the first processed transaction, balancing conversion and risk.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to improve and extend the v1 onboarding flow, automate approvals for low-risk applications, and establish a clear manual-review path for other applications.
• Run KYB checks, including entity validity, registration and good standing, EIN match, address, MCC and business-model validation, website and menu review, and relevant licensing.
• Lead beneficial owner and control-person KYC under the CDD rule, including ownership thresholds, document and selfie checks, sanctions, PEP and adverse-media screening, and enhanced due diligence for complex ownership, shell entities, and nominee owners.
• Personally review applications and merchant transactions, handle complex cases, and develop the manual-review playbook and turnaround standards.
• Build underwriting frameworks for each vertical covering expected volume and ticket size, chargeback exposure, deposit and delayed-delivery risk, reserves, rolling holds, limits, and monitoring and re-underwriting triggers.
• Select, configure, and tune orchestration, KYB, and fraud vendors based on measured false positives, false negatives, and cost.
• Partner with Fraud and Data Science on merchant fraud patterns, including bust-out, transaction laundering, collusive merchants, and application fraud rings.
• Write and maintain policies and procedures that meet sponsor bank, Visa, Mastercard payment facilitator, and BSA/AML requirements; work with Compliance and Legal on CIP, risk assessments, and exam readiness.
• Report funnel and portfolio health—including approval rate, time to approve, manual-review rate, early-life loss, and chargebacks—to executive leadership and bank and network partners.

Benefits

• Competitive salary, equity stake, and performance bonus program.
• Subsidized medical plans, including a free HDHP with company-sponsored HSA contribution; dental and vision coverage are included.
• One Medical membership, Wellhub (Gympass) access, family planning programs, and other wellness benefits.
• 401(k) plan with a company match.
• Commuter FSAs.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Exclusive employee-only Bilt Points opportunities.
• Team events.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed