Risk Analyst

Risk Analyst

Location: San Francisco, CA or Phoenix, AZ (In-Office)

Partnership: Our client is building the financial rails for $1.5T of Education Funds. EQL Tech has been exclusively retained by a high-growth technology startup to appoint a mission-critical Credit & Fraud Risk Analyst to work directly with our Head of Risk, and make real decisions on user onboarding and transaction monitoring.

About the Company & The Mission

EQL Tech is proud to represent a highly ambitious, well-funded startup that has raised $16M from top-tier VCs and angels. The company is building the financial rails to help families access new State education funds (known as ESAs or School Choice Funds).

The $900B US Public Education budget is being opened up for parents to take control of their portion, which averages $7.5k per kid per year. Ambitious homeschool parents are already using these funds to piece together their dream education experience. Helping them access these funds is Step 1 in the journey to build the next-gen education system. The company treats this as their life's work and has already rejected an acquisition offer because they care about this being done right.

The Team

You will be joining an in-person company, working together in the office.

• The Founders: The founders are engineers who have run their own alternative school together. One previously worked as a Quant at Goldman Sachs, and the other built the computer vision system for the largest smart warehousing company globally, serving 1M customers/day at age 19.

• The Core Team: You will work alongside top talent, including a founding engineer who did AI research at MILA and at Elon Musk’s SpaceX school, a Head of Risk from Mercury, Stripe, and Circle, and a Payments Engineer from Microsoft and Goldman Sachs. The team also includes the former Deputy Director at Arizona's ESA department and leading school choice advocates.

The Role: Risk Analyst

As the Risk Analyst, you will work directly alongside our Head of Risk to monitor, investigate, and automate the risk operations powering our charge card program. This is a high-ownership role with direct impact on the company's financial and compliance health.

As Risk Analyst, you will:

• Monitor & Investigate: Track transaction activity across our charge card program to identify fraud patterns, suspicious behaviour, and emerging risk vectors.
• Analyse Portfolio Performance: Track approval rates, loss rates, NSF returns, and credit utilisation to inform underwriting changes and policy updates.
• Build Analytics Initiatives: Identify data-driven insights into origination and portfolio management strategies for risk mitigation and volume expansion.
• Automate Operations: Build automations for operational procedures that AI agents can streamline across BSA/AML, Credit, Fraud, and Servicing.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with engineering, support, legal, and compliance teams to represent risk needs across company functions.
• Champion the Customer: Communicate directly with customers with empathy, and actively work to reduce friction and create delightful customer journeys, without compromising on risk.

Your Profile

You have 2+ years of experience in investigative, operational, and/or data analysis in the risk, credit, fraud, or trust & safety space, in a fast-paced environment.

• You are obsessed with making complicated things feel simple: You naturally question assumptions, remove unnecessary steps, and advocate for simplicity before automation.
• You’re fast, precise, and decisive: You can form a view with incomplete information, then update quickly.
• You take pride in the details and care about users: You enjoy refining the systems and operations because it improves the experience for users, whilst also maximising your own goals in your role.
• You crave ownership: We position our team to understand customer problems. You have high expectations for yourself and enjoy the autonomy to find the best path forward.
• You like to dig into the data: You are comfortable using SQL for analyzing real transaction data to decide what is the highest leverage work to do.

Commitment, Compensation & Benefits

This will be a big commitment, and we’re aiming high. It needs to be something you are energised about taking on, or this isn’t the team for you.

• Generous Founding Equity: We compensate you well with equity.

• Top-Tier Backing: We’ve raised $16M from top-tier VCs and angels.
• Relocation Support: You are willing to relocate to San Francisco, CA, or Phoenix, AZ, and travel to visit customers. We’re an in-person company and are in the office together.
• Comprehensive Visa Sponsorship: If you do not have a visa, we can support you.
• Unmatched Impact: The rare opportunity to directly shape how the $900B US Public Education budget is being opened up for parents to take control of their portion (avg. $7.5k/kid/year)