Head of Risk, Cardless
$200-275k
Plus equity
Co-branded credit card creation platform
Job no longer available
Co-branded credit card creation platform
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
$200-275k
Plus equity
21-100 employees
Company mission
To make credit more engaging, rewarding, and accessible.
Role
Who you are
- Have at least 10 years of experience in consumer lending risk management, including experience across credit and fraud, and with card products specifically
- Experience working at a technology company, and the collaboration with engineering and product that comes with it!
- Experience hiring and building a team — any leader can be evaluated in large part by the quality and impact of the team they build
- Technical and quantitative experience (e.g. querying large datasets in SQL and model building in Python, SAS, or R)
- Strong communication skills — an ability to communicate technical Risk concepts to a non-technical audience verbally and in writing for a variety of non-Risk stakeholders (i.e. Operations, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Boards, and leadership teams)
What the job involves
- Managing credit and fraud risk is core to what we do at Cardless, and as Head of Risk you will be responsible for the leadership and oversight of our risk systems and team
- (1) Application decisioning:
- We have built an embedded lending platform that sources credit card applicants to several card products from across our partner's businesses, and utilizes our partners' resources and customer relationships to inform our underwriting decisions
- This platform includes credit bureau integrations, fraud vendors, a rules engine, and manual review (risk ops)
- As part of your role you'll oversee the models and underwriting techniques we deploy through this platform, as well as work closely with our design, engineering, compliance, legal, and capital markets teams to continually improve how the system functions
- (2) Transaction decisioning:
- Applications are the first key flow of our business
- The second is the humble credit card transaction
- Here you'll be responsible for overseeing the system that monitors transactions, declines (and sometimes freezes) those we believe to be fraudulent, weighing the tradeoff between customer convenience / ease and risk management
- You'll also work closely with our customer service team to optimize the customer experience as much as possible (no legitimate customer likes it when their card is declined, or account is frozen!)
- (3) Portfolio monitoring:
- Critical to managing a credit card book is ongoing monitoring of the portfolio, and making adjustments where needed to adequately manage risk
- This is a critical part of maintaining a healthy book
- (4) Issuing & lending partnerships:
- Cardless is a technology company, not a bank
- That means we have to work closely with bank(s) and lenders to power our credit card products
- As part of your role, you'll be responsible for the health of those partnerships — at least as it pertains to credit and fraud risk
- This means preparing materials for regular meetings with those partners, adjusting policies as needed based on their feedback, etc..
- In taking on this role you’ll also be a leader at our company more broadly
- You’ll be encouraged and expected to weigh in on company strategy, including our product roadmap, the brands we choose to partner with, our capital stack, our culture and organization building plan, and much more
Our take
Cardless is a financial technology company attempting to modernise co-branded credit card programs. There are around 200 brands in the U.S. with traditional cards that haven't been modernised in over 20 years. These traditional cards, from the likes of Costco and Sam's, enable shoppers to collect reward points that they can use for things like travel.
Cardless’ co-founders are no strangers to the financial industry. Michael Spelfogel spent time at Visa, and Scott Kazmierowicz worked in banking for Goldman Sachs. Through their experiences, they spotted a gap in the market for simple, credit card loyalty programs that focus on customer experiences. For example, it helps popular consumer brands launch credit cards that can engage with their fans and reward them with bespoke benefits.
The global credit card market is valued at over $100 billion. It's certainly big enough for consumer brands to enter; however, with Cardless acting as a middleman, there's always a risk that it could get frozen out by the big banks. Nevertheless, it secured $60 million in Series C funding in 2025, which will be used to expand its products, partnerships and card programmes.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Sep 2025
$60m
SERIES C
Nov 2024
$30m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $140m
Company benefits
- 💸 Competitive salaries, equity, and a 401(k) plan
- 🏥 Top-of-the-line healthcare (medical, vision, and dental), with 100% primary coverage and 75% dependent coverage for medical
- 🌴 Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 15 days off per year
- 👶 Parental leave for birthing and non-birthing parents
- ✈️ Team trips & offsites
- For in-office employees:
- 🍱 Catered lunch at the office every day, plus plenty of snacks & drinks
- 🚎 $250/month commuter assistance for public transit or our parking garage
- For remote employees:
- 🖥️ $500 remote setup stipend to help you do your best work
Company HQ
Mission District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Scott Kazmierowicz
(Co-Founder & CEO)Former Investment Banker at Allen & Company and Bank of America. Former Software Engineer at Goldman Sachs. BS in Computer Science at Stanford University.
Michael Spelfogel
(Co-Founder & President)Former Data Scientist at Lyft and Rent the Runaway. Formerly in Commercial Card Management at Visa. BASc in Management Science and Engineering at Berkley.
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