Pine Labs - Associate Director - Risk - SETU

Associate Director - Risk for SETU

Importance of the Role

Risk is core to everything we do-especially in financial services, where trust, reliability, and compliance are non-negotiable. As our ecosystem grows in scale and complexity, the way we manage risk must evolve.

This role is critical to safeguarding the integrity of our systems and protecting customers from fraud, misuse, and operational lapses. But we're not looking to just manage risk-we're looking to redefine how it's done using automation, intelligence, and AI-first thinking.

As the Risk Team Lead, you will:

- Design real-time monitoring systems

- Ensure AML compliance

- Drive efficient dispute resolution

- Lead Setu's transition to AI-led risk infrastructure

- You will embed intelligence into decision-making, triaging, fraud detection, and operations.

What will you do at Setu?

Build & Scale Intelligent Monitoring:

- Design real-time risk detection frameworks combining heuristics, behavioral signals, and learning systems

- Identify gaps in existing rule-based systems and lead the shift toward intelligent automation and pattern-based detection

- Champion AI models to reduce noise, prioritize alerts, and flag complex fraud scenarios (e.g., mule rings, synthetic identities)

Drive Smart Dispute & Chargeback Operations:

- Lead a team managing end-to-end dispute resolution with banks and regulators

- Implement AI-powered workflows (smart routing, NLP classification, evidence summarization) to improve resolution speed and accuracy

- Partner with ops and tech to reduce friction in the dispute lifecycle and prevent recurring edge cases

Build Feedback Loops for Learning:

- Partner with engineering and data science to train, test, and deploy internal ML models (anomaly detection, risk scoring, merchant tiering)

- Establish strong feedback loops from frontline operations to improve automated risk decisions

- Advocate for explainability and audit-readiness in deployed intelligence

Reimagine Onboarding & Merchant Risk:

- Embed AI into onboarding (KYB validation, document parsing, website analysis, content checks)

- Build processes to flag high-risk merchants using application data, transaction behavior, and external signals

Lead the Function, Set the Vision:

- Define what modern risk operations should look like in a scaled payments environment

- Build a team fluent in automation, experimentation, and systems thinking-not just operations

- Collaborate with leadership, compliance, and tech to make AI foundational to platform safeguards

Who is the right fit for this role?

You'll do well if:

- You've led or significantly contributed to risk/fraud initiatives where AI/ML played a central role

- You understand how intelligence improves risk systems (alert prioritization, pattern detection, operational efficiency)

- You've worked closely with engineering or data teams to deploy automation into production

- You're process-oriented but comfortable challenging outdated playbooks

- You demonstrate strong judgment and ownership in high-stakes environments

- You build teams-not just systems-and can lead through ambiguity, scale, and transformation