Senior Risk Investigator - Fraud Incident Management & Partner Response

Mercury•San Francisco, NY

About The Position

Mercury is hiring a senior individual contributor to lead fraud incident response across its products, from detection through postmortem, covering first-party and third-party fraud. The investigator serves as an operational lead during high-severity events, coordinates cross-functional response, and turns complex incident data into clear, defensible recommendations and documentation for internal stakeholders, bank partners, and auditors. The role is part of Fraud Operations within the Fraud & Disputes organization. It works closely with Fraud Investigations and Enablement, Risk Strategy, Compliance, Legal, Partnerships, Product, Engineering, and partner-bank teams. The investigator also supports audit and regulatory observations in the Fraud domain and helps prepare Mercury to operate as a bank by translating examiner and partner-bank expectations into operational processes, evidence, and documentation. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.

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.
Hands-on investigation experience with both 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, driving cross-functional response, making decisions with incomplete information, and conducting 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 institutions and direct experience working with sponsor or partner banks, regulators, examiners, or auditors.
Understanding of US payment rails and fraud typologies, such as ACH, wires, checks, cards, account takeover, mule accounts, and synthetic or first-party fraud.
Ability to retrieve and interpret volume, loss, and rate data using SQL or dashboard tools, and explain what the numbers mean and where they may be misleading.
Ability to influence colleagues outside one’s reporting line and drive decisions to closure across Operations, Strategy, Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Legal.
Sound escalation judgment, including presenting recommendations and supporting facts to help leaders make decisions.
Experience using AI and automation to synthesize evidence, draft documents, summarize incidents, and maintain current status reporting.

Nice To Haves

Experience with 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 incident response for fraud across Mercury products, including account takeover, card testing and BIN attacks, mule and ring activity, spikes in fraud behavior, and first-party fraud trends.
Mobilize incident response, assess impact, coordinate the appropriate teams, and maintain alignment on known information, open questions, and ownership.
Make or prepare recommendations on containment, customer communications, reimbursements and credits, account actions, and escalation.
Run postmortems and retrospectives for first-party and third-party fraud incidents, documenting root causes, control gaps, remediation owners and dates, and tracking follow-up actions.
Identify patterns across incidents and translate findings into durable improvements to alerts, rules, SOPs, products, tools, and training.
Draft incident and retrospective memos for bank partners and internal risk governance, documenting events, impacts, root causes, controls, remediation plans, and timelines.
Use AI tools to draft from incident data, then verify all figures and claims against source data.
Prepare concise, accurate 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 alongside 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 accuracy, providing program context, addressing inaccurate facts or ratings, and agreeing on realistic action plans and ownership.
Maintain current evidence, SOPs, and decision records for audits and examinations.
Track issues through governance systems with Enablement until closure and confirm that fixes are effective.
Mentor teammates on effective escalation, including presenting recommendations and supporting facts.
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.