Payments and Risk Operations Lead

About the Position

Payments and Risk Operations Lead

San Francisco, CA

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About the Role

Our Payments & Risk Operations team is responsible for the day-to-day health, reliability, and integrity of our payments platform across the Atoms portfolio, including Otter, CloudKitchens, Picnic, Lab37, and more.

We are looking for someone to own the function end-to-end across both payments operations and risk operations. From a payments operations perspective, you will own the operational health of pay-ins and payouts, work through processor and merchant issues, identify recurring failure points, and improve payment reliability. Across risk operations, you will own fraud and abuse programs spanning chargebacks, account takeovers, refunds and appeasements, promotional abuse, and emerging threats.

This is a highly hands-on, high agency role for someone who is proactive, accountable, and comfortable operating in ambiguity. We are looking for someone who sees an issue, digs into the details, brings the right people together, and drives it through resolution. Whether investigating a merchant escalation, working directly with a processor, analyzing trends in SQL, improving a BPO workflow, or partnering with Product and Engineering on a longer-term solution, the right person will bring structure where it is needed, spot gaps early, and continuously raise the bar for how the function operates.

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Responsibilities

• Own Payments & Risk Operations end-to-end. Set the operating agenda, identify where we need to improve, and drive the work forward across both payment operations and risk.
• Own the full risk operations portfolio, including transaction fraud, account takeovers, chargebacks, refunds and appeasements, promotional abuse, KYC/KYB, sanctions-related operations, and emerging risk vectors. Continuously evaluate where our controls need to evolve as the business and threat landscape change.
• Serve as the central point of contact for major fraud events and high severity payment or risk escalations, including executive escalations. Take ownership of the response, bring together the right stakeholders, and drive issues through resolution.
• Ability to operate independently and navigate ambiguity with minimal guidance.
• Lead a BPO team responsible for frontline payment and risk operations. Set the team's SOPs, workflows, escalation paths, quality standards, and priorities, and make sure they have the context and tools needed to operate effectively.
• Identify operational pain points before they become recurring problems. Develop a clear point of view on where processes need to change, where tooling is falling short, and where Product and Engineering investment can make the function more scalable.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including Product, Sales, Legal, Customer Success, and Customer Support to drive coordinated risk strategies.
• Own the risk P&L, partnering with Finance and Accounting to report on loss metrics and surface key trends impacting the business.
• Lead red team exercises in collaboration with stakeholders across the company to proactively identify vulnerabilities and stay ahead of emerging risks.

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Requirements

• 4-7 years of hands-on experience in payments operations, fraud and risk, or financial operations, with meaningful experience across both payments and risk.
• Strong understanding of payment processing and money movement, including pay-ins, payouts, settlement, reconciliation, and processor operations.
• Strong analytical skills, including SQL, with experience using data to identify trends, define KPIs, and drive operational improvements.
• Experience leading or partnering with BPO teams and managing relationships with payment processors, financial partners, and third-party risk vendors.
• High-agency operator with strong cross-functional communication skills, a bias for action, and a proven ability to take ambiguous problems from identification through resolution.

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We Offer

• Competitive base salary range of $140,000 - $165,000 per year.
• Equity awards and an annual performance-based bonus.
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, company-paid life and disability insurance, 401(k), Health Savings Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Accounts, and more.
• Onsite work environment in our San Francisco office, five days a week.

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About the Company

At Atoms, you’ll work on one of the defining challenges of our time-bringing automation into the physical world to drive real, lasting impact. We exist to uncover valuable unknown truths and turn them into progress, which means constantly pushing beyond what’s known and building what doesn’t yet exist. The work is ambitious and often challenging, but it’s grounded in a shared sense of purpose and a team committed to seeing it through together. Our work only matters if it serves others, and we know that meaningful progress depends on the trust of the people we serve and the strength of our team-so we invest in both, creating an environment where you can do your best work and grow.

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Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others?

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