Head of Risk Product Strategy

Job description

WHO WE ARE Imprint helps the world's best brands grow the lifetime value of their customers. We started with co-branded credit cards and rebuilt them to be smarter, more rewarding, and brand-first. We partner with companies like Crate & Barrel, Rakuten, Booking.com http://Booking.com, H-E-B, Fetch, and Shell to launch modern credit programs that deepen loyalty, unlock savings, and drive growth. But the card is just the beginning. We combine advanced payments infrastructure, intelligent underwriting, and deep customer data to create delightful and personalized experiences for members as well as efficient and profitable relationships for our brand partners. Our robust technology and world-class operations allow us and our brand partners to offer powerful financial products without becoming a bank. In the U.S., co-branded cards alone account for over $300 billion in annual spend, and most still run on decades-old legacy bank systems. Imprint is the modern alternative: flexible, embeddable, and built for how people actually pay today. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Thrive Capital, Ribbit, and Khosla Ventures, we're building a world-class team to redefine how people pay and how brands grow. If you want to move fast, solve hard problems, and own real outcomes, we want to meet you. Role Summary As Head of Risk Product Strategy, you will own the product strategy for Imprint's risk organization — spanning onboarding, underwriting, loan assignment, and collections. This is a senior individual contributor role with high visibility and direct impact on Imprint's core economics and customer experience. You will serve as the connective tissue across risk-focused teams, translating complex risk signals into a coherent product vision and roadmap. Success in this role requires equal parts analytical rigor, cross-functional influence, and the leadership presence to align stakeholders and drive execution at pace. This role is a fit for someone who has thrived at a tech-forward fintech and knows how to move fast without losing sight of risk fundamentals. What Success Looks Like in the First 90 Days - Completed an end-to-end audit of Imprint's current risk systems across onboarding, underwriting, loan assignment, and collections — with a clear view of the highest-leverage gaps - Defined a 12-month risk product roadmap, prioritized by both economic impact and customer experience - Established strong working relationships with product and engineering counterparts, earning trust as a reliable cross-functional partner - Demonstrated ability to command the room — communicating clearly and driving alignment across stakeholders at all levels Responsibilities Risk Product Strategy & Roadmap - Own the strategic roadmap for how risk capabilities are expressed in Imprint's product, spanning onboarding, underwriting, credit line management, authorization, fraud prevention, and account management - Identify opportunities where risk intelligence can improve the customer experience: smarter instant approvals, dynamic credit limits, real time fraud detection that doesn't create unnecessary friction, proactive line increases for strong performers - Define the sequencing and prioritization of risk product initiatives, balancing customer impact, revenue potential, loss reduction, and engineering feasibility - Conduct ongoing audits of risk systems to identify gaps, inefficiencies, and high impact improvement opportunities - Ensure every new product feature that touches a credit or risk decision has a clear risk strategy before it ships, not after Credit Decisioning Architecture - Own the strategic design of Imprint's credit decisioning framework: how applications are evaluated, how lines are assigned and managed, how step ups and step downs work, and how authorization rules balance fraud prevention with customer experience - Partner with data science to define where and how models are deployed in the product, what signals they consume, and how their outputs translate into customer facing decisions - Drive the evolution from static rule based decisioning toward dynamic, signal rich systems that adapt to customer behavior in real time Cross Functional Leadership - Serve as the primary strategic interface between risk and product/engineering, ensuring risk requirements are embedded in product specs, sprint planning, and architectural decisions - Partner with credit policy to ensure product level decisioning aligns with risk appetite, regulatory requirements, and portfolio strategy - Work with finance to model the economic impact of risk product initiatives, quantifying how changes to decisioning, limits, or authorization rules flow through to revenue, losses, and contribution margin - Collaborate with brand partners and GMs to tailor risk product strategy to partner specific economics, customer bases, and growth objectives - Translate complex risk data and trends into clear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership New Product & Partner Launches - Define the risk product blueprint for new partner launches: how underwriting, line assignment, fraud controls, and servicing logic should be configured for each new program based on partner economics and target customer profile - Ensure new launches are instrumented for rapid learning. The right data is captured, the right holdouts are in place, and the feedback loop from early performance to strategy adjustment is built in from day one - Identify opportunities to extend risk capabilities across the portfolio, where a solution built for one partner can be generalized and deployed to others Measurement & Optimization - Define the KPI framework for risk product performance, connecting decisioning quality to downstream outcomes (approval rates, activation, utilization, loss rates, customer satisfaction) - Build the feedback loops that turn portfolio performance data into product improvements, ensuring the system learns and compounds over time - Establish a test and learn discipline for risk product changes: structured experimentation, clean measurement, and rigorous readouts that separate signal from noise - Self serve on data analysis using SQL and analytics tooling to identify trends and surface insights independently - Leverage AI tools (e.g., Claude) to accelerate analysis, synthesis, and strategy development Qualifications Required - 10+ years of experience spanning risk strategy and product strategy in consumer lending, cards, or fintech, with meaningful time on both sides of the risk product boundary - Deep understanding of credit card economics end to end: underwriting, line management, authorization, loss forecasting, and how product decisions flow through to portfolio P&L - Proven track record of building risk capabilities that are embedded in product, not layered on top. You've shipped features where risk logic was a core design element - Ability to operate across onboarding, underwriting, and collections with a clear understanding of how risk decisions affect both unit economics and customer experience - Strong technical fluency: comfortable with SQL, familiar with how ML models are built and deployed, able to self serve on data and engage with engineering on system architecture without being an engineer - Experience defining and prioritizing product roadmaps, writing strategic documents, and driving cross functional alignment at the leadership level - Judgment and credibility to operate at the intersection of risk (conservative by nature) and product (biased toward speed). You know when to push for more velocity and when to pump the brakes - Exceptional communication skills: you can explain a complex risk product tradeoff to a brand partner, a CFO, or an engineer and have all three walk away with clarity - Comfortable working with AI tools (e.g., Claude) as a core part of the workflow Nice to Have - Experience with machine learning concepts or Python-based modeling (depth not required, but familiarity valued) - Background managing or coordinating across multiple risk-focused teams or functions - Exposure to consumer lending, credit card, or BNPL products - Experience operating at L5/L6 scope in a high-growth, fast-moving environment PERKS & BENEFITS - Competitive compensation and equity packages - Leading configured work computers of your choice - Flexible paid time off - Fully covered, high-quality healthcare, including fully covered dependent coverage - Additional health coverage includes access to One Medical and the option to enroll in an FSA - 20 weeks of paid parental leave for the primary caregiver and 8 weeks for all new parents - Access to industry-leading technology across all of our business units, stemming from our philosophy that we should invest in resources for our team that foster innovation, optimization, and productivity Imprint is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Imprint is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. Imprint welcomes talented individuals from all backgrounds who want to build the future of payments and rewards. If you are passionate about FinTech and eager to grow, let’s move the world forward, together.