Lead Credit Manager, Fraud

At Tilt (formerly Empower), we see a side of people that traditional lenders miss. Our mobile-first products and machine learning-powered credit models look beyond outdated credit scores, using over 250 real-time financial signals to recognize real potential. Named among the next billion-dollar startups, we're not just changing how people access financial products — we're creating a new credit system that backs the working, whatever they're working toward.

Tilt is searching for a strategic fraud leader to protect customers and our card portfolio while enabling smart growth. You’ll set the end-to-end fraud strategy and roadmap across identity, application, and transactional flows, partnering with Data Science to deploy real-time models and rules that reduce loss, minimize friction, and scale profitably. You’ll collaborate with Product, Engineering, Ops, Compliance, and Finance to ship resilient, customer-centric fraud controls that keep pace with evolving attack vectors.

Travel for company offsites is expected at a minimum of two times a year.

Lead fraud strategy development, including:

• Define the year+ fraud roadmap across account opening, authentication, payments, disputes/chargebacks, and account lifecycle .

• Partner with Data Science to develop, test, and deploy models (supervised/unsupervised, GBMs) and decisioning logic that perform in real time with tight latency SLAs and clear governance.

• Build feedback loops that connect labels (chargebacks, returns, SAR outcomes), device/behavioral signals, and manual review outcomes back into models/rules.

Own portfolio protection & performance management:

• Set targets and monitor KPIs: fraud loss rate (bps), approval/authorization rate, false-positive rate, customer friction, manual review rate, dispute win rate, and time-to-detect.

• Stand up dashboards and alerting to detect pattern shifts; lead fast, disciplined response (playbooks, kill switches, rules hot-fixes, targeted experiments).

• Partner with Finance to quantify trade-offs (loss vs. conversion vs. cost-to-serve) and to size/sequence investments that drive efficient frontiers.

Drive disciplined vendor strategy (sourcing through scale):

• Own a strategic vendor portfolio spanning identity verification, device intelligence, behavioral biometrics, link/graph analysis, consortium data, and payment risk.

• Run rigorous evaluations: define use-cases, data contracts, and offline/online POVs with clear success metrics (coverage, precision/recall, latency, ROI, TCO).

• Negotiate commercial terms and integration plans; rationalize overlap, deprecate low-ROI tools, and design resilient fallback paths.

Design experiments & policies that unlock new efficient frontiers:

• Structure experiments across onboarding flows, risk thresholds, and step-up authentication to reduce fraud without over-rejecting good customers.

• Challenge existing processes/tools with creative, data-driven improvements to customer experience and operational efficiency (e.g., reviewer tooling, queue design, auto-adjudication).

Collaborate to ship end-to-end protections:

• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data Science, Operations, and Compliance/Legal to design controls, implement monitoring, and meet partner bank/regulatory expectations.

• Translate complex analytical insights and threat intel into crisp recommendations that influence exec decisions and cross-functional roadmaps.

• Strong advanced analytics toolkits (strong SQL, Python) and experience with statistical modeling (regression, GBMs)

• B.S. degree in engineering, business, finance, computer science or mathematics

• 5+ years track record of success in data analytics / credit roles + at least 2+ years focusing on financial fraud strategy and risk management

• You are relentlessly focused on delivering measurable customer and financial impact.

• You think both analytically and creatively, using data to uncover opportunities and imagination to design bold solutions.

• You thrive in the details where true value is found but can quickly pull up to distill insights and influence C-suite decisions.

• You operate best with a high degree of autonomy, identifying where the value is in a problem space and creating a clear agenda to go after it.

• You use AI to challenge the status quo, bringing forward smarter, faster, and more effective ways to work and ship valuable products.

• You are a strong thought partner to Data Scientists, excited to explore and implement cutting-edge models that raise the bar for underwriting performance.

• You are an effective leader without authority on flat cross-functional teams shipping valuable products.

Don’t meet every qualification? We care about potential over your past. If you're bringing ambition and drive to what we're building, we want to hear from you.

• Virtual-first teamwork: The Tilt team is collaborating across 14 countries, 12 time zones, and counting. You’ll get started with a WFH office reimbursement.

• Competitive pay: We're big on potential, and it's reflected in our competitive compensation packages and generous equity.

• Complete support: Find flexible health plans at every premium level, and substantial subsidies that stand up to global standards.

• Visibility is yours: You can count on direct exposure to our leadership team — we’re a team where good ideas travel quickly.

• Paid global onsites: Magic happens IRL: we gather twice yearly to reconnect over shared meals or kayaking adventures. (We’ve visited Vail, San Diego, and Mexico City, to name a few.)

• Impact is recognized: Growth opportunities follow your contributions, not rigid promotion timelines.

We're looking for people who chase excellence and impact. Those who stand behind their work, celebrating the wins and learning from the missteps equally. We foster an environment where every voice is valued and mutual respect is non-negotiable — brilliant jerks need not apply. We're in this together, working to expand access to fair credit and prove that people are incredible. When you join us, it's not just another day at the [virtual] office, you're helping millions of hardworking people reach better financial futures.

You’re pushing ahead in your career? We can get behind that. Join us in building the credit system that people deserve.