About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.

We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 125+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we’ve managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states.

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we’re helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don’t exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we’re unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.

Job Description

We are seeking an accomplished and technically fluent executive to head our Fraud, Risk, and Disputes organization across both our issuing and acquiring businesses. In this role, you will set the strategic direction for risk management and fraud mitigation, define operational requirements, and manage the performance of our fraud and disputes functions.

You will drive the continuous evolution of the company’s risk management discipline and tools to achieve best in class risk management services for our customers. You’ll work closely with Engineering, Operations, Compliance, and Finance to build scalable and effective risk controls—driving business-appropriate protection, automation, and performance across the entire customer and transaction lifecycle.

This role is ideal for a leader who brings deep operational excellence and expertise with card issuing and acquiring risk, a data-driven mindset, and proven success growing and leading teams in high-growth payments and/or fintech environments.

As Head of Risk, you will be responsible for protecting our customers and our platform while enabling business growth. You’ll lead one of the company’s most critical functions—setting the standard for operational excellence, customer trust, and regulatory integrity. Your work will directly influence company performance and reputation as we scale.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Ownership

• Develop and execute the company-wide risk and dispute management strategy across issuing and acquiring programs.
• Align risk policies with customer experience, customer risk appetite and regulatory expectations.
• Define clear business requirements for and lead the development of tools, models, and workflows; ensure solutions are scalable and measurable.
• Establish and enforce key metrics to understand and enable management of fraud loss, false positives, dispute win rates, and operational efficiency.
• Establish strong documentation, SOPs, and QA standards across risk and disputes functions.
• Design dashboards and KPIs to provide visibility into trends, gaps, and performance against goals.
• Drive company wide alignment on risk priorities.

Risk Management

• Lead the end-to-end fraud strategy—including account onboarding, transaction monitoring, and account takeover prevention.
• Manage risk and fraud for card issuing across onboarding, funding, and usage.
• Manage merchant risk in acquiring—covering merchant onboarding, transaction monitoring, and chargeback exposure.
• Proactively detect and mitigate anomalies or systemic risks across both business lines.
• Collaborate with engineering and data science to operationalize machine learning and AI-driven fraud detection.
• Stay ahead of emerging fraud patterns and typologies across both issuing and acquiring.

Disputes & Chargebacks

• Own the full lifecycle of disputes and chargebacks, ensuring Reg E, Reg Z, and network rule compliance.
• Define automated and scalable processes that improve recovery rates, minimize false disputes, and reduce resolution time.
• Partner with engineering to design and enhance user-facing dispute flows and supporting infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 20+ years of experience in fraud and risk operations in payments, fintech, card issuing (acquiring is a plus).
• Demonstrated senior leadership experience across both issuing and acquiring fraud domains.
• Expertise in all fraud typologies (e.g., ATO, synthetic identity, transaction fraud, merchant collusion).
• Strong working knowledge of applicable regulations including Reg E, Reg Z, and card network chargeback frameworks.
• Experience defining business requirements for fraud tools and systems; fluent in AI/ML detection concepts, tools and deployment.
• Operationally strong and metrics-focused; able to identify inefficiencies and drive automated, scalable, data-backed solutions.
• Excellent communicator and cross-functional leader; experienced in aligning technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience building and scaling high-volume fraud and disputes operations from early-stage to mature organizations.
• Experience managing fraud and risk for both embedded finance and API-based card programs.
• Experience as the fraud, risk and disputes executive leader and SME in regulatory reviews, sponsor bank and customer discussions.
• Outstanding executive communication and problem solving skills, able to tackle complex problems with confidence and creativity and able to communicate issues and solutions with credibility and clarity.

Why Highnote?

• We’re a startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization.
• We’re a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the fintech world, some of us don’t. We value the varied backgrounds and the diverse perspectives of our employees.
• We’re small on hierarchy and big on growth. We’re a flat organization that allows everyone to have direct exposure to our leadership team. We are looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity.
• We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Westcap, and Pinegrove Venture Partners. Angel Investors include Bill Ready (CEO at Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder & CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote benefits

• Flexible Paid Time Off
• 100% healthcare coverage + 75% coverage for dependents
• 401k program
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks paid leave for the birth parent, and up to 6 weeks paid leave for the non-birth parent
• Equity in Highnote
• Stipend to build out your home office; internet and phone reimbursement
• At Highnote we have built a total rewards philosophy that includes fair, equitable, geo-based compensation that is performance and potential based. Our compensation packages are competitive based on robust market research and are a combination of a cash salary, equity, and benefits. In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the annual salary range for applicants is $200,000-$275,000.

Highnote is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people from all backgrounds and identities to apply. We do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by US federal state or local laws, or the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e.: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).