Head of Risk

This is a net-new leadership role for a peer-to-peer marketplace scaling fast, built to give Trust & Safety a real seat at the table instead of being a reactive cost center. You'll report straight to the COO and own the function end to end: fraud prevention, identity verification, investigations, and moderation. Success looks like a measurably safer platform within a year, fewer fraud losses, faster incident response, and a T&S team running on real workflows and automation instead of tribal knowledge. What You'll Own - Build and run the Trust & Safety operating model from the ground up: team structure, workflows, tooling, and the roadmap to scale it - Drive down fraud losses and platform risk by defining and tracking the metrics that actually move the needle - Translate marketplace threats into executive-ready reporting that gets budget and buy-in - Partner with Product and Engineering to ship fraud detection, identity verification, and moderation tooling that delivers measurable results, not just features - Own high-severity incident response, connecting Legal, Engineering, and Operations so investigations actually change policy and product - Evaluate and manage vendor relationships for fraud and identity tools, owning the build-vs-buy calls - Set the policy foundation with Legal, keeping it audit-ready and enforceable across the org What We're Looking For - 7+ years in Trust & Safety, Fraud Operations, or Risk Management - 5+ years leading people, including managing other managers or senior ICs - A track record of building or scaling a Trust & Safety, fraud, or marketplace-integrity function, not just running an existing one - Proven ability to turn operational problems into systems and influence cross-functional roadmaps - Experience reporting metrics and outcomes directly to executive stakeholders - Background in a high-growth marketplace, platform, or consumer internet business - Professional fluency in English, C1 minimum, written and spoken Nice to Have - Background in P2P marketplaces, rental platforms, or fintech - Hands-on experience with identity verification or fraud tools like Jumio, LexisNexis, TransUnion, or IPQS - Experience standing up AI or automation-driven workflows inside a T&S org Tools and Stack Zendesk, Snowflake, Jira, Confluence, Slack, plus identity/fraud platforms like Jumio or IPQS Details -

Location

• Show a proven “trust‑first” operating model: In your resume or portfolio, include a concise case study (1‑2 pages) that details how you built a risk‑management function from scratch for a marketplace—cover team structure, SOPs, tooling stack (e.g., Sift, Kount, Stripe Identity, custom ML risk scores) and the automation roadmap you implemented. Quantify impact (e.g., “‑35% fraud loss in 9 months, incident response time cut from 48 h to 4 h”). LatamCent will look for this exact end‑to‑end experience.
• Demonstrate metric‑driven decision making: Prepare a short “risk dashboard” mock‑up (Power BI, Looker, or Tableau) that tracks the key KPIs LatamCent cares about—fraud loss ratio, false‑positive rate, verification throughput, moderation SLA, and “trust score” trend. During the interview walk the interviewers through the logic behind each metric and how you’d use them to prioritize tooling or staffing investments.
• Highlight expertise in identity verification & fraud automation: List concrete projects where you integrated APIs such as Onfido, Jumio, or local Colombian ID verification services, and where you built rule‑based or ML‑based fraud detection pipelines (Python, Spark, AWS SageMaker). Bring code snippets or a GitHub repo (redacted PII) that shows a detection rule engine or a model‑training workflow—this will differentiate you from candidates with only policy experience.
• Show remote leadership chops: Prepare specific examples of how you managed distributed T&S teams across time zones—e.g., daily “war‑room” stand‑ups, async incident triage using Slack/Discord bots, and documentation in Confluence or Notion. Emphasize cultural fit for LatamCent’s Colombian remote environment by mentioning fluency in Spanish, experience with Colombian regulatory frameworks (e.g., data‑privacy, fintech), and any prior work with Latin‑American marketplaces.
• Negotiate with market data for a remote Colombian leader: Research comparable “Head of Risk” roles at fast‑scaling LATAM fintechs (e.g., Nubank, Rappi) and cite total compensation ranges: USD 120‑150 k base + 0.2‑0.5 % equity for remote senior leaders. Position your ask around the value you’ll deliver—e.g., “‑30% fraud loss translates to $X M saved in the first year,” justifying a higher base or a performance‑linked bonus tied to risk‑reduction milestones.