Fraud Director, Fintech in London

Rakuten Viber is one of the most popular and downloaded apps in the world. Working with us provides a unique opportunity to influence hundreds of millions of users and to be part of the journey that makes us a super-app. Our mission is to make people’s lives easier by enabling meaningful connections - from precious moments with family and friends, through managing business relationships to pursuing their passions. As part of the Rakuten Viber super app strategy, we are scaling an integrated fintech offering that puts trusted payments, money movement and financial services into the hands of our users worldwide.

As Director of Fraud for our Fintech business, you will own the end-to-end fraud strategy protecting our customers, our products and our P&L. You’ll set the fraud risk appetite, build the control framework, lead the operational response to fraud incidents, and work with product, engineering and data science to scale detection as we grow across markets. This is a first-line leadership role reporting into the Fintech leadership team, with close partnership to Compliance, Legal, Security and Risk in the second line. You will lead a team of fraud data scientists and analysts, and represent Rakuten Viber externally with regulators, payment schemes, law enforcement and industry bodies.

Successful outcomes in this role will have a direct and measurable impact on customer trust, fraud losses, and our ability to launch new fintech products safely at scale.

Why join us

You’ll be building the fraud function for a fintech embedded in one of the world’s most widely used communication platforms, backed by the scale of Rakuten Group. You’ll have the autonomy to set strategy from the top, the data volume to make ML genuinely effective, and the executive sponsorship to invest in the right tools and team. If you want a role where fraud is treated as a strategic business function — not just a control — this is it.

• Strategy & risk appetite: Define and own the fintech fraud strategy, risk appetite, and KRI/KPI framework. Present to executive and board-level risk committees.
• Fraud prevention & detection: Lead the design, optimisation and continuous improvement of our fraud detection systems - combining machine learning models, rules engines, device intelligence and behavioural analytics — to prevent account takeover (ATO), authorised push payment (APP) scams, card fraud, first-party fraud, mule activity and synthetic identity.
• Product risk partnership: Act as the fraud risk owner for new product launches and market expansions. Approve fraud risk on new features, ensuring controls are proportionate, scalable, and embedded from design.
• Operational leadership: Lead fraud operations, investigations and case management. Ensure SLAs, quality and customer experience standards are met across real-time decisioning, alert review, and post-event recovery.
• Data & technology direction: Leverage the extensive data from our application to set the technical direction for fraud tooling. Partner with Data Science and Engineering to build, deploy and monitor models in production; own vendor selection and performance for third-party fraud tooling (device fingerprinting, behavioural biometrics, consortium data, screening).
• Policy, governance & controls: Own fraud policies, standards and playbooks. Ensure controls align with regulatory expectations (e.g. FCA, EBA, PSD2/PSD3, CRM Code, local reimbursement regimes) and Rakuten Group risk standards.
• Loss management & reporting: Manage the fraud loss and dispute cost budget. Report fraud performance, emerging threats and remediation plans to senior leadership on a regular cadence.
• Incident response: Lead the response to fraud incidents and attacks, coordinating cross-functionally across Product, Engineering, Security, Comms, Legal and Customer Support.
• External engagement: Represent Rakuten Viber Fintech externally — with regulators, law enforcement, payment schemes (Visa, Mastercard, local schemes), industry forums and peer fintechs — to shape policy and share intelligence.
• Team leadership: Build, coach and scale a high-performing, diverse fraud team. Set clear goals, develop talent, and create an environment where the team can do their best work.
• Cross-functional alignment: Work closely with management, product, engineering, compliance, legal, and security teams to align, present, and implement end-to-end fraud solutions.

10+ years of experience tackling fintech fraud problems at scale (at least 100K+ transactions/events per day), with deployed solutions delivering measurable, proven business impact.

5+ years of experience leading and managing fraud teams in fintech, digital banking or payments with a demonstrable track record of reducing fraud losses while protecting customer experience.

Deep technical understanding of fraud attack methods and the end-to-end control stack in a modern fintech or digital banking environment: authentication, onboarding/KYC, transaction monitoring, real-time decisioning, disputes and chargebacks.

Strong knowledge of the regulatory environment for fraud and financial crime — including AML/KYC, PSD2/PSD3, FCA/EBA expectations, APP reimbursement regimes and equivalent frameworks in the markets we operate in.

Proven ability to set fraud risk appetite and operate a formal risk framework (KRIs, KPIs, risk assessments, incident management) in a regulated environment.

Strong data fluency — comfortable interrogating SQL, reviewing model performance (type-1 / type-2 error trade-offs, precision/recall), and making data-led decisions. Hands-on coding is welcome but not a requirement; directing and challenging Data Science and Engineering is.

Excellent stakeholder management: able to influence senior leaders, partner with product and engineering, and represent the company externally with regulators and industry peers.

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience; Master’s in a quantitative discipline (Statistics, Finance, Data Science, Computer Science) is a plus. Background in compliance, KYC, AML and other financial regulations while managing fraud risks.

Experience operating at scales of >100K transactions/day.

Experience working with technologies like Athena/Trino, Spark, Python, SQL, AWS, CI/CD and Tableau.

Experience with specific fraud vendors (e.g. device intelligence, behavioural biometrics, consortium data, identity verification) and payment scheme fraud programmes (Visa VAMP, Mastercard Excessive Fraud).

Professional certifications such as CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner), ACAMS, or ICA.

Experience launching or scaling fraud controls across multiple jurisdictions (UK, EU, APAC).

Experience representing a financial services firm in regulatory conversations, industry working groups, or public consultations.