Senior Fraud and Risk Analyst

REMOTE - AMERICAS - EMEA - FULL TIME

Shopify is a leading global commerce company that provides trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage businesses of any size. Merchants use our software to power their businesses across multiple sales channels, including web, tablet and mobile storefronts, social media and marketplaces, and in their brick-and-mortar and pop-up shops. Our platform and services are engineered for reliability, and have raised the standard for shopping experiences of consumers across the world. Shopify powers over one million businesses in more than 175 countries.

About the team

Within the Shopify Trust Team, the Fraud and Risk Management Team is committed to building trust in Shopify. From detecting high risk patterns of behaviour to keeping up to date on emerging risk vectors and industry best practices - all with the goal of mitigating losses to both Shopify and merchants - our work is challenging, impactful and constantly evolving. The Fraud and Risk Management team is responsible for, among other things, overseeing Shopify's fraud-related policies and procedures in order to identify and offboard bad actors, and mitigate loss and reputational damage, all while supporting the growth of legitimate businesses on our platform. This includes investigating and actioning escalations relating to potential bad actors and financial loss or reputational damage, as well as proactively monitoring for and improving our ability to capture related signals. As Shopify continues to grow, expand its geographical footprint and develop new product offerings, avenues for fraud and risk constantly evolve and our job is to stay ahead of both existing and emerging trends.

About the role

We're looking to add a Senior Fraud and Risk Analyst to our team. This role is for an experienced thought leader and builder in the fraud and risk space. The Senior Fraud and Risk Analyst will be responsible for the following:

• Build out programs related to identifying, preventing and mitigating the exploitation of the Shopify platform and products by bad actors; then operationalizing those programs and measuring their success, all while ensuring a low-friction experience for legitimate users.
  
• Build networks to collaborate on policy and program development, at times intersecting with work done in other areas of fraud and risk.
  
• Liaise with risk developers and engineers to articulate any required technical implementations.
  
• Leverage your expertise to ensure that new Shopify product development incorporates a fraud and risk lens, and to help Shopify stay ahead of emerging industry trends.
  

To be successful on the Fraud and Risk Management team you must be a self-starter with a data driven mindset who can keep track of emerging industry trends and Shopify's existing processes, to identify and solve for any gaps that may be developing. You must be a quick learner who is able to apply your knowledge and experience to novel scenarios and determine the appropriate course of action in a well-reasoned and scalable way. You also need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and have a collaborative and team-oriented outlook. The ability to adapt and always be a constant learner (and a sharer of what you have learned!) is a must for this position.

Real talk: Shopify has vast product ambitions and is continuously moving into novel spaces to help support our merchants' business growth. This brings new exposure to the risk of exploitation by bad actors. We need someone who understands the fraud and risk industry deeply, and is committed to learning about new areas of business and related fraud vectors, in order to ensure Shopify remains a trusted platform.

You'd be doing things like:

• Performing complex fraud & risk investigations to detect and uncover cases of sophisticated fraud, possible fraud rings or other areas of potential loss.
  
• Developing policy and programs on specific areas of risk and fraud, and improving existing processes to meet industry developments and best practices.
  
• Contributing to the development of fraud & risk detection systems.
  
• Reviewing and/or gathering data and reporting to uncover signs of fraud, abnormalities or credit risk.
  
• Communicating and reporting KPIs focused on industry trends, issues, mitigation strategies and plans, with a forward looking view of fraud & risk.
  
• Analyzing merchant events and actions, and setting the appropriate controls in response.
  
• Work in a collaborative and innovative environment on projects and assignments to improve efficiency in fraud prevention & risk detection.
  
• Ensuring that team, merchant-facing and support-facing documentation is up to date.
  
• Training and mentoring junior colleagues.
  
• Working in a collaborative and innovative environment.
  
• Working with other members of the Trust Team, Legal Team, Financial Services Team, data team, engineering team and other stakeholders on various matters as required.
  

Qualifications

We're looking for someone who demonstrates:

• 5-10+ years of experience building out fraud and risk strategies and programs.
  
• Significant knowledge of the fraud and risk landscape and commitment to remaining abreast of emerging trends.
  
• Substantial experience handling high value processing and high visibility accounts.
  
• Superb investigative, analytical, and decision making skills. This role involves looking at multiple sources of information in order to make the right decision. You must be able to creatively seek out stones to overturn in an effort to protect Shopify from bad actors while minimizing friction for legitimate users.
  
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills. This means you have the ability to communicate with a wide variety of audiences about complex situations using plain language.
  
• Operational experience in financial transaction processing (including CNP), banking and credit risk analysis with a direct focus on risk and fraud.
  
• Experience in and a demonstrated passion for risk evaluation, underwriting, actuarial principles, fraud detection & fraud investigations.
  
• Knowledge of the rules impacting processors and merchants set by the card associations.
  
• A proactive approach to solving problems. This means you have a hunger to learn and are genuinely curious about the way things work, and have made "drawing the owl" your personal mantra.
  
• Incredible organizational and time management skills. You must be self-directed, able to prioritize well, work efficiently, and demonstrate flexibility as workloads and complexity fluctuate with minimal supervision.
  
• Keen observation skills and a willingness to pitch in. This means you're a great team player. If you notice some of your teammates are struggling with an issue, you jump in to help.
  

Bonus experience:

• Experience working in fraud and risk management at a fintech, bank, commerce platform, marketplace, or insurance industry.
  
• Experience working with SQL.
  
• Additional languages are an asset (French, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin)
  

How to apply

We know that applying to a new role takes a lot of work and we truly value your time. Please read the following questions and give us your take on a solution by responding in the "Notes to the Hiring Manager" section of the application. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

• What are some of the trends you foresee that worry/excite you in the Fraud & Risk space over the next few years? How do you see these trends applying to Shopify's products?
  
• What, in your view, are the top 3 ways a merchant can cause financial loss for a payment processor? What are the leading signals indicating risk in this area?
  
• What do you think are some of the most common ways an individual might attempt to commit fraud on a commerce platform? How would you propose to address them on a platform with a bias for low friction user experience?
  

At Shopify, we are committed to building and fostering an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion enables us to truly make commerce better for everyone. We strongly encourage applications from Indigenous peoples, racialized people, people with disabilities, people from gender and sexually diverse communities and/or people with intersectional identities.

This posting will close on Monday September 13th at noon EST.

At Shopify, we are committed to building and fostering an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion enables us to truly make commerce better for everyone. We strongly encourage applications from Indigenous peoples, racialized people, people with disabilities, people from gender and sexually diverse communities and/or people with intersectional identities. Please take a look at our 2020 Sustainability Report to learn more about Shopify's commitments.

How we hire

At Shopify, we put a lot of care and time into who we hire. We believe that in order to build the best products, we need to build high impact teams. Our recruitment process centres around what we call the Life Story interview, a conversational-style interview where we get to learn more about you.

#LI-KO5 #LI-REMOTE

How we hire

At Shopify, we put a lot of care and time into who we hire. We believe that in order to build the best products, we need to build high impact teams. Our recruitment process centres around what we call the Life Story interview, a conversational-style interview where we get to learn more about you.
Learn more about our hiring process