Senior Risk Investigator - Fraud Incident Management & Partner Response

Mercury•Portland, OR

3d•$138,800 - $192,800

About The Position

Mercury is hiring a senior individual contributor for Fraud Operations within its Fraud & Disputes organization. The role owns fraud incident response from detection through postmortem across first-party and third-party fraud. It also produces evidence-based memos and responses for partner banks and auditors, serves as an operational point of contact in partner-bank conversations, and leads Fraud Operations’ response to audit and regulatory observations. The investigator will help prepare Mercury to operate as a bank by translating examiner and partner-bank expectations into practical processes, evidence, and documentation. The role works closely with Fraud Investigations and Enablement, Risk Strategy, Compliance, Legal, Partnerships, Product, Engineering, and bank partners. It requires sound judgment in ambiguous situations, effective cross-functional coordination, clear written communication, and the ability to turn incident findings into durable improvements to controls, processes, and tooling.

Requirements

At least 6 years of experience in fraud investigations, risk operations, or financial crimes at a bank, fintech, or other regulated financial services company, including hands-on investigation of first-party and third-party fraud.
Experience leading or serving as a key operator in fraud incidents or similar high-severity events, including assessing impact, coordinating cross-functional response, making decisions with incomplete information, and running postmortems.
Strong writing skills and a track record of producing precise, defensible incident reports, regulatory or partner-bank memos, or audit responses read by executives or examiners.
Working knowledge of regulated financial institutions and direct experience with sponsor or partner banks, regulators, examiners, or auditors.
Solid understanding of US payment rails and fraud typologies, including ACH, wires, checks, cards, account takeover, mule accounts, and synthetic or first-party fraud.
Comfort pulling and interpreting volume, loss, and rate data with SQL or dashboard tools, and explaining the meaning and limitations of the numbers.
Ability to influence people outside the reporting line and drive decisions to closure across Operations, Strategy, Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Legal.
Good escalation judgment and the ability to present facts and recommendations that help leaders make decisions.
Experience using AI and automation to synthesize evidence, draft documents, summarize incidents, and keep status reporting current.

Nice To Haves

Experience on the sponsor-bank or bank-partner side of fraud, such as UAR/SAR support, Reg E error resolution, or card network and NACHA rules.
Experience with BPO or outsourced operations.
Familiarity with incident management tools and practices, including severity levels, incident command, and written postmortems.
Continuous improvement or project management background.
Experience in a high-growth fintech environment.

Responsibilities

Lead or serve as the operational directly responsible individual for fraud incidents across Mercury products, including account takeover, card testing and BIN attacks, mule and ring activity, fraud spikes, and first-party fraud trends.
Mobilize incident response, assess impact, involve the appropriate teams, and maintain alignment on known facts, open questions, and ownership.
Make or prepare recommendations on containment, customer communications, reimbursements and credits, account actions, and escalation.
Lead postmortems and retrospectives for first-party and third-party fraud incidents, documenting root causes, control gaps, remediation owners and dates, and status.
Identify patterns across incidents and translate them into lasting improvements to alerts, rules, SOPs, product or tooling requests, and training.
Draft incident and retrospective memos for bank partners and internal risk governance, covering events, impact, root cause, controls, remediation plans, and timelines.
Use AI tools to prepare initial drafts from incident data and verify all figures and claims against source data.
Prepare accurate, concise responses to partner-bank questions, suspicious activity and investigation inquiries, and requests for information.
Serve as a day-to-day operational contact for partner-bank risk, AML, and investigations teams, working with Partnerships and Compliance.
Track partner requests, commitments, and change-management items, ensuring Fraud Operations responds consistently and on time.
Bring partner feedback and expectations to Fraud Operations, Strategy, and Product to inform controls and processes.
Support audit and regulatory observations in the Fraud domain by validating facts, providing program context, addressing inaccurate ratings or facts, and agreeing on realistic action plans and owners.
Keep evidence, SOPs, and decision records current for audits and examinations.
Track audit and regulatory issues through governance systems with Enablement, and confirm that corrective actions are effective.
Mentor teammates on effective escalation, including presenting facts and recommendations.
Work with Enablement and QC to incorporate incident learnings into training, scorecards, and playbooks.
Partner with Strategy and Engineering on tools and reporting that improve incident response.