Risk Strategist en Relay

Our mission is to increase the success rate of small businesses. Traditional banking has been a growth limiter rather than a growth enabler for business owners, and we’re changing that. Relay is the all-in-one, collaborative money management platform. We’re building for employer SMBs and their finance function, internal and external, and are focused on delivering a human-centric customer experience. Ultimately, we help SMBs be ‘on the money'.

Relay is scaling rapidly, and we’re expanding our Risk Strategy team to help safeguard our platform and the millions of small businesses that rely on it. We’re looking for a data-driven, customer-obsessed problem solver who is excited to define risk strategy and drive meaningful impact – not just maintain existing processes.

As a Risk Strategist, you’ll own projects end-to-end, analyzing fraud trends, backtesting and optimizing fraud rules, and collaborating closely with Risk Operations, Customer Experience, Product, Engineering, and Data to strengthen our defenses. You’ll turn insights into rules, processes, and systems that protect our customers and directly influence how we detect and prevent fraud while ensuring a seamless, trusted experience.

At Relay, your work has real reach – helping millions of SMBs operate safely and confidently. If you’re passionate about using data to solve meaningful problems, shaping risk strategy, and making a tangible impact, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Risk Strategy: Own the design and optimization of rules and strategies that balance fraud prevention, operational efficiency, and a seamless customer experience

• Data-Driven: Analyze onboarding, account, and transaction data to uncover emerging fraud patterns, vulnerabilities, and growth opportunities

• Design & Optimization: Develop, test, and tune fraud rules across customer touchpoints (onboarding, payments, account usage) to protect customers and reduce false positives

• Impact Measurement: Backtest rule changes to assess effects on fraud rates, customer experience, and operational workload

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with Product and Engineering to embed fraud controls in new features and products

• Risk Operations Partnership: Work closely with Risk Ops to ensure risk decisions are actionable, efficient, and scalable

• Tooling & Vendor Management: Implement automation, fraud tools, and external data sources to strengthen the risk engine

• Continuous Improvement: Monitor performance post-deployment, iterating rules and strategies to drive ongoing optimization

• Stakeholder Communication: Translate insights into clear recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders, aligning risk decisions with business objectives

Who You Are

• You have 2+ years of experience in fraud, risk strategy, or data analysis, preferably in fintech, banking, or payments

• You’re proficient in SQL (joins, aggregations, window functions, subqueries) and can write efficient queries with minimal supervision

• You’re analytical and curious, digging into trends to understand the “why” and using data to shape smarter fraud rules

• You own projects from start to finish, defining the problem, diving into data, and driving solutions to completion

• You’re a strong communicator, translating complex insights into clear, actionable recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders

• You’re collaborative and know how to navigate cross-functional work with Risk Operations, Customer Experience, Product, Engineering, and Data

• You’re developing risk intuition, understanding not just what works, but why each decision drives downstream impact

• You thrive in fast-paced environments, tackling challenges, optimizing processes, and raising the bar across the team

Bonus Points

• You have credit risk experience – comfortable with portfolio analysis, decisioning logic, and/or underwriting models

• You’re proficient in Python for advanced analysis or automation

• You have worked in a startup or scale-up environment

Our Commitment to You

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity: Relay employees are Relay owners, complete with equity and a competitive salary.

• Comprehensive health benefits: enjoy full health benefits from day one. We offer flexible Health or Wellness Spending Accounts and medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents.

• Flexible vacation and time off: every team member starts with 15 vacation days and 5 flex days to use as needed, plus an extra week of office closure during the end-of-year holidays so you can take time off to recharge and come back better for our customers.

• Parental leave with top-up: we offer 12 weeks off with a 100% salary top-up for all full-time employees, regardless of location, and accessible for all parents: birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive.

• Hybrid work environment: we value meaningful collaboration and connection at our Toronto office twice a week, with lunch, snacks, and beverages on us.

• Dog-friendly space: can dogs really make you happy and healthy? We don’t know for sure, but since we don’t want to chance it, our office is 100% floof-friendly.

• Personal and professional growth: through ongoing feedback, mentorship, and coaching, work with peers and leaders who are invested in your growth and success.

• Top-tier equipment: as a Mac-first company, our Toronto offices have everything you need to produce your best work comfortably, from multiple screens to ergonomic seating.

• Social connection: we believe in celebrating our wins with two annual company-wide get-togethers, quarterly team events, happy hours, and special events and networking opportunities with industry leaders.

The Interview Process

• Stage 1: A 30-minute Google Meet video call with a member of the Talent team

• Stage 2: A 45-minute Google Meet video call with the Manager, Risk Strategy

• Stage 3: A 30-minute Google Meet video call with a member of the Leadership team

• Stage 4: A take-home case study followed by a 60-minute Google Meet video call with our team

Why Relay Might Be the Perfect Fit For You

• You push relentlessly for reinvention: You’re built to constantly ask, “How can this be better?” Change excites you and you drive it. 

• You crave autonomy: We trust our team with big challenges and the freedom to solve them. If you’re someone who takes initiative, is comfortable taking risks, and seeks input when needed, you’ll find the freedom here empowering.

• You own your work: You take pride in your work, follow through on commitments, and feel a deep sense of responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks.

• You treat comfort as a red flag: You seek growth. When things feel too comfortable, you lean into change. You’re excited about  stepping into the unknown and navigating new terrain to create something better alongside your team. 

• You care about impact, not noise: You care deeply about the substance of your work. You measure success by results, not recognition and you let your work speak for itself. 

• You’re energized by complexity and ambiguity: You enjoy tackling problems that don’t come with a playbook. You’re comfortable building from scratch, iterating as you go, and collaborating to shape the best path forward.

• You seek out feedback: We value directness, clarity, and respect. We believe honesty fuels great work and career growth. You see feedback as a tool for learning and improvement, and you know that open, honest dialogue is key to achieving the best results — together.

• You’re here for more than a job: At Relay, everything we do is in service of our mission to help small businesses thrive. To drive impact and have purpose here, that mission must matter to you too.

Our Promise

We’re driving real change for small business owners, powered by truly remarkable people. At Relay, you’ll find the confidence to take chances, trust to take initiative, and the support you need to build a career you love. Here, we make sure every team member feels empowered to make big decisions, encourage to ask tough questions, and challenged to take risks that result in work we’re all proud of. We give you the baton–you run the Relay.

What’s Important to Us:

Research shows that women-identifying and other marginalized individuals often apply only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. But no one is a perfect match on paper. If this role excites you, we’d love to hear from you and figure out together if it’s a great fit.

At Relay, we believe that diversity is key to building high-performing teams, and creating an inclusive work environment is our priority. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills.

We will work with applicants to provide accommodations at any stage of the hiring process. If you require accommodations during the interview process, please email your Talent Partner, and we will work with you to meet your needs.