Director of Fraud Prevention

Topstep

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Fraud Prevention owns the fraud prevention, detection, and enforcement program across the full trader lifecycle, with direct accountability for payout integrity and chargeback/dispute exposure. This is a senior operating leadership role that requires decisive execution in a predominantly manual environment, clear ownership of outcomes, and executive-ready reporting.
This role establishes baseline reporting across fraud, payouts, and chargebacks, and continuously improves the operating cadence, controls, and decision frameworks as the business scales.

Requirements

• 8–12+ years of experience in fraud, payments, disputes/chargebacks, risk, or trust & safety roles.
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing fraud operations and dispute workflows.
• Strong understanding of payments fraud, account abuse, transaction risk, and dispute/chargeback processes.
• Experience operating in high-volume or regulated environments, with strong comfort in manual operational execution.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to deliver clear, executive-ready reporting and recommendations.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in fintech, trading, brokerage, or financial services environments.
• Familiarity with fraud vendors, rules engines, scoring models, and dispute management tooling.
• Experience partnering with processors, card networks, or regulators.

Responsibilities

• Fraud Strategy, Policy & Governance: Own the end-to-end fraud strategy across onboarding, trading activity, payments, and payouts.
• Define and maintain fraud and abuse policies, thresholds, and enforcement standards aligned to Topstep’s trader model.
• Establish clear decision frameworks and escalation criteria for high-risk cases and exceptions.
• Continuously assess emerging fraud patterns and platform vulnerabilities and translate insights into implemented controls.
• Fraud Operations & Enforcement: Lead daily fraud operations including monitoring, investigations, escalations, and enforcement actions.
• Design and maintain scalable manual workflows for review, approval, and enforcement that are consistently applied.
• Ensure fraud workflows are auditable with documented rationale for high-risk or exception decisions.
• Identify process gaps and operational inefficiencies and own resolution with clear timelines and measurable outcomes.
• Payout Integrity & Payout Fraud Enforcement: Own fraud controls related to trader payouts, including identity verification, account integrity checks, behavioral analysis, and policy enforcement prior to payout execution.
• Define and maintain payout hold/release/clawback criteria, including secondary review and approval requirements for high-risk cases.
• Serve as the senior decision-maker for complex or reputationally sensitive payout fraud cases.
• Ensure payout decisions are timely, evidence-based, and consistently documented.
• Chargeback & Dispute Operations: Own end-to-end chargeback and dispute operations, including intake, triage, representment strategy, evidence standards, and deadline management.
• Establish clear criteria for when Topstep disputes vs. accepts a chargeback, with consistent application across the team.
• Own chargeback reason-code discipline and technical dispute handling, including root-cause identification and corrective actions.
• Build and maintain dispute processing training, QA, and coaching for onshore and offshore teams to ensure consistent, defensible outcomes.
• Payment Processing Controls & Network / Processor Management: Own payment processing control requirements and execution across processors/acquirers, including configuration, monitoring, and operational controls (e.g., gateway/processor capabilities).
• Establish monitoring for chargeback thresholds and network programs, and take proactive action to prevent breaches or penalties.
• Partner with Engineering to implement and maintain upstream controls that reduce downstream disputes and payout abuse.
• Ensure clear ownership, timelines, and follow-through on payment processing initiatives and control improvements.
• Reporting, Analytics, & Tooling: Establish baseline reporting across fraud operations, payouts, and chargebacks with clear definitions, sources of truth, and cadence.
• Deliver executive-ready summaries that answer the question asked with clear outcomes and numbers (not raw google sheet exports).
• Own data quality for fraud/chargeback reporting and drive improvements to reduce reliance on ad hoc spreadsheets and manual reconciliation.
• Partner with Data and Engineering on tooling improvements that measurably improve speed, consistency, and auditability of fraud decisions.
• Cross Functional Leadership: Present fraud, payout integrity, and chargeback trends and recommendations to executive leadership in concise, decision-oriented formats.
• Influence upstream product and policy decisions to mitigate fraud and abuse while protecting legitimate trader experience.
• Team Leadership & Development: Build, lead, and develop the fraud and dispute operations organization including managers and analysts.
• Set clear roles, standards, and performance expectations; ensure appropriate coverage and decision authority across the team.
• Own training and coaching programs (with emphasis on dispute/chargeback processing and enforcement consistency).
• Lead by doing: demonstrate hands-on ownership during incidents, escalations, and high-risk decision cycles.

Benefits

• Topstep is an engaging working environment which ranges from fully remote to hybrid. We foster a culture of collaboration with cameras on during meetings and a robust Slack environment for communication.
• Seven Company-paid Holidays and generous Family Leave.
• Paid time off is front-loaded.
• Competitive 401(k) matching, health, dental, and vision insurance is offered for full time employees.
• Vacations are encouraged with a bonus for taking 5 consecutive days.
• Employee referrals are bonused.
• Topstep offers a food and groceries budget and contributes towards health and wellness.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees