Senior Risk Operations Specialist

Realtor.com Careers•Scottsdale, AZ

8d•Hybrid

About The Position

Realtor.com® is seeking a Senior Risk Operations Specialist to join their payments and trust & safety team. This role is an advanced individual contributor responsible for hands-on investigations, supporting payments and trust & safety queues, and leading quality assurance and coaching for specialists in these areas. The specialist will act as the first line of escalation, own the quality bar for the team's work, and run training and QA programs to ensure accuracy, safety, compliance, and a user-centric approach. This is not a people management role, as specialists will continue to report to the Manager, Payment Operations. The position offers an opportunity to deepen impact by protecting users, money movement, and platform integrity, while also coaching others and scaling a high-performing operations team.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in payments, fraud, financial services, trust & safety operations, content/account review, back office operations and/or KYC, with a strong track record of high-quality investigations and sound judgment in risk-sensitive situations.
Demonstrated excellence investigating and resolving complex issues across payments and trust & safety, including identifying root causes and proposing pragmatic, durable solutions.
Proven ability to coach and influence peers without formal people management authority, including giving clear, direct, and constructive feedback that helps others improve.
Strong instincts for quality and detail, with a consistent focus on accurate investigations, thorough documentation, and thoughtful customer communication.
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. You’re comfortable explaining payment flows, trust & safety risks, decisions, and tradeoffs to specialists and cross-functional stakeholders.
A data- and pattern-driven mindset. You pay attention to trends in returns, disputes, abuse signals, policy violations, failure modes, and fraud patterns, and use those insights to inform your recommendations.
Experience collaborating effectively with cross-functional partners (for example, Product, Engineering, Finance, Compliance, Legal, and Customer Care).

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with tools and vendors commonly used in payments, fraud, and trust & safety operations (for example, Stripe, Plaid, Cognito, Proof, credit bureaus, NACHA rails, or similar risk and moderation platforms) is a plus.
Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience in a related field (e.g., payments, risk, operations, fraud, trust & safety) preferred.

Responsibilities

Serve as the first line of escalation for complex payment and trust & safety issues raised by specialists, Customer Care, and internal partners, identifying root causes and recommending durable solutions.
Handle a portfolio of advanced, high-complexity cases yourself, spanning payments and trust & safety, modeling high-quality investigations, documentation, and communication for the rest of the team.
Make judgment calls on high-risk transactions, fraud and abuse patterns, and edge-case scenarios, while following established policies, playbooks, and monetary thresholds.
Partner closely with the Payment Operations Manager on daily priorities, workload and queue management across both groups, and the assignment of complex work across the team.
Act as the day-to-day lead when the Manager, Payment Operations is out, including managing escalations across both domains and coordinating with cross-functional partners on urgent issues.
Own the quality bar for Payments and Trust & Safety Specialist work by defining and maintaining clear standards for investigations, documentation, SLAs, customer communication, and risk posture.
Run a regular QA program: conduct recurring QA reviews for payments and trust & safety cases, provide timely and actionable feedback, track quality trends, and share insights with leadership. Design, maintain, and continuously refine QA scorecards and rubrics that are easy for the team to understand and apply across both payments and trust & safety workflows.
Provide ongoing coaching and skill development through 1:1 coaching sessions, case reviews, shadowing, and debriefs focused on improving investigation quality, documentation, judgment, and customer experience.
Design and run training for the payments and trust & safety operations team, including structured onboarding for new specialists and refresher training when workflows, tools, policies, or vendor capabilities change.
Maintain and contribute to process documentation so that payments and trust & safety workflows, standards, and best practices are clear, up-to-date, and easy to reference.
Collaborate with Customer Care, Product, Engineering, Finance, Compliance, and Legal to clarify edge cases, share patterns, and surface operational pain points and failure modes observed in both payments and trust & safety queues.
Document and communicate trends across cases—including fraud and abuse patterns, operational bottlenecks, policy gray areas, and user experience friction—so that they can inform product, policy, and tooling improvements.