Head of Risk - FinTech

B2B card payments infrastructure, with a focus on the country’s 500,000 commercial fleets, 40 million commercial vehicles, and many millions of commercial drivers. The incumbent technologies that cater to these customers are decades old, and businesses with fleets increasingly demand modern digital experiences and transparent financial services products. Coast’s mission is to deliver this at a transformational scale, beginning with the Coast Fleet and Fuel Card built on a cutting-edge spend management platform.

The Risk team at Coast owns the full credit and fraud lifecycle — underwriting policy, account management, fraud detection, and the decisioning infrastructure that automates all of it. We’re hiring a senior generalist who can operate across that entire surface: someone who can set credit and fraud strategy one week and build the workflow, query, or data pipeline that executes it the next.

You won’t hand your ideas to another team to implement — you’ll design the policy, wire it into our decisioning systems, and measure whether it worked. You’ll interact daily with the heads of Sales, Product, Operations, Compliance, Legal, Finance, and the CEO to deliver on risk initiatives.

Own credit and fraud risk strategy end-to-end

Leverage internal credit performance, transaction, application, cash-flow, financial, and credit-bureau data to shape underwriting, line increase/decrease, account suspension, and other critical account policies.

Execute the policies you build by conducting credit reviews, line increase/decrease decisions, and high-risk enablement reviews, then use what you learn to improve the system.

Build and maintain the decisioning infrastructure that executes risk policy

Configure underwriting logic, case-management and monitoring workflows, and vendor integrations for fraud, identity, and document verification.

Identify where manual risk operations can be automated, then design and implement the automation.

Lead fraud investigations across account takeover, identity theft, and first-party fraud

Conduct root-cause analyses and ship data-driven detection rules and defenses.

Own risk data and reporting

Build and maintain dashboards, monitoring alerts, and underlying data models while partnering with Data Engineering on the broader roadmap.

Partner cross-functionally with Product, Sales, Operations, Compliance, Legal, and Finance to lead credit and fraud initiatives.

You run the root cause on last week's fraud event, size what the current strategy actually caught versus what it only slowed down, and come back with a recommended change rather than a summary of findings

You take it to risk review, defend the numbers against the approval rate pushback from sales, get sign off, and update the credit procedure so the change is documented

You deploy it yourself in the decisioning platform and build the monitoring dashboard with Claude and Sigma, instead of filing a ticket and waiting two sprints

You work the queue alongside the team: high risk cases past SLA, velocity control reviews, transaction monitoring, applications in group review. You step in wherever needed to support Risk Operations—whether it's reviewing credit line increases or decreases, approving payment extensions, adjusting grace periods, activating high-risk categories, or handling other judgment-based decisions that require thoughtful analysis.

You step in wherever needed to support Risk Operations—whether it's reviewing credit line increases or decreases, approving payment extensions, adjusting grace periods, activating high-risk categories, or handling other judgment-based decisions that require thoughtful analysis.

You track delinquency and charge off by cohort, and flag early when a policy change starts showing up in 30+ DPD, which is the number our warehouse lenders read

You own the risk stack end to end (Alloy, Oscilar, Inscribe, Persona, Sentilink, Truebiz, SBFE) and hold each vendor accountable on both hit rate and cost per decision

4-8 years of experience in credit risk, fraud risk, or risk strategy roles, ideally in SME lending.

AI-native mindset: you’re already using AI tools in your daily work to build workflows, analyze data, and move faster—and you’re excited to push further.

True generalist: comfortable owning a policy question, an investigation, and a technical build in the same week, and able to prioritize among them.

Strong SQL skills and the ability to independently analyze transaction, cash-flow, credit, fraud, and application data.

Hands-on experience configuring or building decisioning systems, risk workflow tools, or rules engines—or the technical ability to learn them quickly.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to turn an ambiguous risk question into a clear written recommendation.

Practical and business-minded, smart and creative, and excited about the rewards and volatility of an early-stage venture-backed startup.

New York City based and able to work in the office 3-4 days per week.

Bonus: Experience with B2B fintech or commercial card products.

Bonus: Experience underwriting small and medium-sized businesses.

Bonus: Experience with risk decisioning or orchestration platforms such as Alloy or Oscilar, plus fraud and identity vendors.

Bonus: Python skills or familiarity with modern data stacks such as Redshift, dbt, Hex, or Sigma.

Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry, and are one part of our total compensation package that also includes benefits, signing bonus, and equity. Pay decisions are based on a number of factors, including scope and qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to other Coast employees. Equity Grant: Meaningful potential upside given Coast’s early-stage trajectory

Medical, dental and vision insurance

Flexible paid time off (vacation, personal well being, paid holidays)

Tools to help manage your financial wellness, including webinars, access to an equity tax advisory service, and company-sponsored 401(k)

Coast is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are building a diverse and inclusive environment, so we encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, disability, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Check out the latest podcast interview on Fintech Layer Cake with Coast Founder Daniel Simon!