Fraud Operations Manager

Fraud Operations is a key function within Preply's Customer Care organisation, responsible for protecting the financial integrity of our marketplace and ensuring a safe, trusted experience for learners and tutors globally. The team operates across fraud investigations, dispute resolution, and chargeback management — partnering closely with Product, Payments, and Finance to manage risk at scale.

As Fraud Operations Manager, you will lead this team and serve as Preply's primary fraud operations authority — owning the function's strategy, operations, and people end-to-end.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead, manage, and develop a team of Fraud Specialists, setting clear expectations, coaching performance, and building a high‑judgement, high‑accountability team culture.
• Own the Fraud Operations roadmap, defining priorities and aligning the function's objectives with broader business goals.
• Design and formalise investigation standards, workflows, escalation protocols, and documentation frameworks across the team.
• Define, track, and continuously improve Fraud Ops KPIs — including chargeback rate, dispute resolution SLAs, false positive rate, and financial exposure metrics.
• Establish a governance cadence: risk reviews, exposure reviews, and threshold calibration with Finance and senior leadership.
• Serve as the eyes on the ground for Product and Data — systematically translating what Specialists observe day‑to‑day (fraud patterns, tooling gaps, detection blind spots) into structured, actionable requirements that directly shape the detection roadmap.
• Cross operational observations with data to identify gaps between what is happening on the ground and what detection models are actually capturing — bringing Product and Data leads trends they can act on, not just dashboard summaries.
• Partner with Product, Payments, and Finance as the primary fraud authority, influencing priorities and ensuring fraud risk is embedded in key decisions.
• Own workforce planning and capacity management to ensure operational resilience.
• Present fraud performance, risk insights, and strategic recommendations to senior leadership.
• Drive continuous process improvement through root cause analysis, policy adherence, and tooling evolution.

What you need to succeed:

• 6‑8+ years of experience in fraud operations, payments risk, or financial crime — with demonstrated people management experience.
• Proven track record leading fraud or risk operations in a marketplace, fintech, or e‑commerce environment.
• Deep expertise in fraud investigation methodology, chargeback management, and fraud detection workflows.
• Experience owning operational KPIs and translating data into decisions and priorities.
• Strong people leadership: you build teams, develop talent, and create cultures of rigour and ownership.
• Able to translate operational observations into clear requirements for Product and Data — comfortable working with PMs and data leads as peers, not just as stakeholders to manage.
• Strong data fluency: you combine what you see in operations with what the data shows, identify gaps between ground‑level reality and what detection is capturing, and surface actionable trends.
• Skilled at designing scalable processes and governance frameworks that outlast any individual.
• Strong understanding of how AI and machine learning models are applied in fraud detection — including how to interpret model outputs, evaluate signal quality, and partner with technical teams to drive detection improvements.

Nice to Have:

• Familiarity with ML‑based fraud detection and feedback loop workflows.
• SQL or BI fluency (e.g. Looker, Tableau).
• Experience in a multi‑currency, cross‑border marketplace environment.
• Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) or Certified Anti‑Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).
• Experience with fraud detection platforms (e.g. Sardine, Sift, Feedzai, Kount).

Why you’ll love it at Preply:

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture.
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, Learning & Development budget and time off for your self‑development.
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance and health insurance.
• Not in Barcelona? We offer an attractive relocation package to join us in our Preply Barcelona Hub.
• Access to free mental health support platforms.
• Access to Gympass‑partnered wellness and gym centers throughout Spain to promote and support well‑being and physical health.
• The opportunity to unlock the potential of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting!).

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:

Preply.com is committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of diverse backgrounds can thrive. We believe that the presence of different opinions and viewpoints is a key ingredient for our success as a multicultural Ed‑Tech company. That means that Preply will consider all applications for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status.