Fraud Operations Analyst

About Gusto At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 500,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process. About the Role: As a Fraud Operations Analyst, you will serve as a fraud-fighting detective, playing a key role in making Gusto the safest and most secure payroll and benefits solution. In this role, you will identify patterns, recognize uncharacteristic behavior, and apply critical thinking to protect our customers. Beyond investigation, you will continuously look for opportunities to iterate and optimize our processes — driving greater efficiency and reducing customer pain along the way. This role also sits at the front line of Gusto’s increasingly AI-native Risk Operations work. You’ll serve as the human in the loop for AI-powered workflows—reviewing flagged cases, validating AI outputs, making nuanced decisions where human discretion matters, and helping improve the systems we use every day. About the Team: The Risk Operations organization is at the core of our business, and our team is a key stakeholder in company decisions and operations. The Fraud Operations team safeguards our customers, company, and platform integrity. Today, Gusto helps power payroll, benefits, and HR for 500,000+ small and medium-sized businesses. As Gusto continues moving toward an AI-first operating model, Risk Operations is evolving how we work so more case volume is supported by AI before it reaches human review, with analysts focused on judgment, edge cases, and continuous improvement. We are a small, close group that works hard. No egos here—we collaborate, share knowledge freely, and help each other out in a positive environment. Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day: Human + AI Partnership & Feedback: Supervise and validate AI outputs for fraud cases, making nuanced decisions where human discretion is needed, while documenting anomalies and opportunities for model improvement to continuously fine-tune AI system performance AI-first mindset: Use AI tools in everyday work (Claude, Gemini, etc.). Explore how prompts, automations, or workflow tweaks can make your day-to-day work faster or smarter. Run operations: Own and optimize our operational task queues—keep things flowing, unblock teams, and put the pieces together to make sense. Protect platform integrity: Safeguard Gusto's ecosystem by investigating flagged activity, validating high-impact findings, and taking decisive action to mitigate risk while minimizing friction for legitimate customers. Proactive critical thinking: Fraud is a complicated puzzle to solve. Come up with innovative methods to identify trends, patterns, and ideally catch unusual activity before impact. Builder Mindset in Action: Identify small manual pain points and experiment with ways to automate or simplify them using AI tools to improve team performance. Work closely with key stakeholders: Work cross-functionally with internal teams, our customers, and external partners. Deliver world-class customer service: Be a resource to our internal teams and customers while working as a Subject Matter Expert to help with escalations pertaining to our area of expertise. Here’s what we're looking for: Experience: 2+ years of experience in operational work, detection and/or investigation. Thought Process: An insatiable appetite for problem solving, knack for structured thinking using a data driven approach, ability to spot unusual patterns, and sharp attention to detail. Demonstrates curiosity and a bias toward experimentation—asks “why” and tests “what if.” Values: Driven by a strong moral compass, is objective yet compassionate, and does the right thing every time. Discipline: Excellent time management skills and ability to handle multiple projects/tasks simultaneously. Is extremely process and policy oriented. Attitude: Goal-oriented, positive, and proactive. Comfortable in a fast-paced, results-oriented work environment. Communicates well with others. Bonus points for: Familiarity with fraud typologies, transaction patterns, and risk indicators. Professional certifications (CFE) Payroll industry experience SQL/data analysis knowledge Our cash compensation amount for this role is between $68,085 - $83,972/year in Denver and between $$85,105 - $104,963/year for New York/San Francisco. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above. Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees. Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto. Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you. Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.