About Setu

India's economic infrastructure needs a complete overhaul. Today, our digital economy runs on legacy systems built in the mid-90s, making even simple bank integrations slow and inefficient.

At Setu, we are building next-generation financial infrastructure by abstracting legacy complexity and offering high-performance API bundles that allow any application to embed finance seamlessly. Our mission is to empower developers to build impactful products that improve people's lives - and to create infrastructure that rivals global leaders like Stripe and AWS.

Role Overview

Risk is at the core of everything we do. As Setu scales, managing fraud, compliance, disputes, and operational risk requires a modern, intelligent, and automated approach.

As the Risk Team Lead, you will own the design and execution of Setu's next-generation risk operations framework. This includes real-time monitoring, AML compliance, dispute management, and merchant risk - with a strong focus on AI-driven decisioning, automation, and learning systems.

You will lead the transition from rule-based risk operations to an AI-first risk infrastructure that is scalable, explainable, and audit-ready.

Key Responsibilities

Build & Scale Intelligent Risk Monitoring:

- Design and implement real-time fraud and risk detection frameworks using heuristics, behavioral signals, and machine learning models.

- Identify gaps in existing rule-based systems and drive automation and pattern-based detection.

- Lead adoption of AI models to reduce false positives, prioritize alerts, and detect complex fraud patterns (mule rings, synthetic identities, etc.).

Dispute & Chargeback Operations:

- Lead end-to-end dispute and chargeback management with banks, networks, and regulators.

- Deploy AI-enabled workflows such as smart routing, NLP-based classification, and automated evidence summarization.

- Partner with Ops and Tech teams to streamline dispute lifecycles and reduce recurring edge cases.

Feedback Loops & Model Learning:

- Collaborate with Engineering and Data Science teams to build and deploy ML models for anomaly detection, risk scoring, and merchant segmentation.

- Establish strong feedback loops from frontline operations to continuously improve model performance and decision quality.

- Ensure explainability, audit readiness, and regulatory alignment for all automated decisions.

Merchant Onboarding & KYB Risk:

- Embed AI into onboarding processes including KYB validation, document parsing, website analysis, and content checks.

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

Leadership & Strategy:

- Define the vision for modern risk operations in a scaled payments ecosystem.

- Build and mentor a high-performing risk team skilled in automation, experimentation, and systems thinking.

- Partner with leadership, compliance, and technology teams to make AI central to Setu's risk strategy.

Candidate Profile:

The ideal candidate will have:

- 6-12 years of experience in Risk, Fraud, AML, or Trust & Safety roles within fintech, payments, banking, or digital platforms.

- Proven experience leading or contributing to AI / ML-driven risk or fraud initiatives.

- Strong collaboration experience with engineering and data science teams to take automation from concept to production.

- Deep understanding of fraud patterns, dispute management, AML frameworks, and operational risk controls.

- A process-driven mindset with the ability to challenge legacy systems and introduce scalable solutions.

- Strong ownership, judgment, and leadership capabilities in high-impact, high-ambiguity environments.

Why Join Setu:

- Work closely with founding leaders who built India's core public infrastructure (UPI, GST, Aadhaar).

- High-impact role shaping the future of financial risk infrastructure in India.

Strong focus on learning and development, including:

- Cross-functional exposure

- Unlimited book budget & learning sessions

- Conference sponsorships

- Sponsored music classes

- Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits.

- A culture focused on mission, craftsmanship, and long-term impact - no gimmicks, only meaningful work.