Senior Specialist, Fraud Attack Response & Insights - Europe

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Senior Specialist, Fraud Attack Response & Insights - Europe

Who is Mastercard?

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.

Overview

• The Fraud Attack Response & Insights team is Mastercard’s integrated fraud attack response, intelligence and card security control function, overseeing real-time incident response and fraud insights generation.
• The Senior Specialist, Fraud Attack Response & Insights – Europe will be based in Lisbon and report to the Director, Fraud Attack Response & Insights – Europe, Asia Pacific and EEMEA. The role will focus primarily on fraud attacks, emerging threats and trends affecting Mastercard customers and the payments ecosystem across Europe.
• The Senior Specialist will combine transaction analysis, fraud expertise and market intelligence to determine how attacks occur, identify potential vulnerabilities or control gaps, and inform immediate and longer-term mitigation actions.
• Working with European regional teams, customers and cross-functional partners, the role will investigate significant fraud events and turn individual attacks into actionable intelligence and systemic learnings. The role may also support significant events in Asia Pacific and EEMEA.
• The role covers fraud affecting account opening, payment cards, account-to-account transactions and emerging payment flows, with a focus on securing the transactions Mastercard enables and participating issuers, acquirers and merchants. This is not a corporate or information security function.

The Role

As Senior Specialist, Fraud Attack Response & Insights – Europe, you will:

Fraud attack response and investigation

• Participate in high-impact fraud Threat Response Teams (TRTs) and other response activities involving European customers.
• Analyze significant attacks to identify patterns, methods, affected payment flows and potential control gaps.
• Analyze transaction, authentication, authorization, clearing and other relevant fraud data.
• Develop and test hypotheses about attack vectors and contributing factors, distinguishing confirmed evidence from hypotheses and outstanding questions.
• Provide timely investigative insights during active events and help assess the effectiveness of mitigation actions.

European fraud intelligence & insights

• Develop deep knowledge of Europe’s fraud landscape, including significant attacks, emerging patterns and evolving threats.
• Connect intelligence across events to identify recurring attack methods, vulnerabilities and control gaps.
• Work with European market and regional teams to incorporate local customer and market intelligence.
• Contribute European intelligence to the broader Fraud Attack Response & Insights function, including the fraud attack registry and related intelligence processes.
• Produce concise, actionable insights for regional stakeholders, product teams, Standards and senior leadership.

Post-incident analysis and systemic remediation

• Develop post-incident analyses documenting attack characteristics, findings, control observations, lessons learned and outstanding questions.
• Support retrospectives following significant European fraud attacks.
• Identify recurring or systemic issues warranting broader investigation or remediation.
• Identify opportunities for network-level controls, standards enhancements, product capabilities or other fraud mitigations.
• Work with fraud response, intelligence, product and Standards teams to translate attack learnings into actionable recommendations and fraud risk intelligence.

Data & analytical capability

• Analyze multiple fraud and payment data sources to identify attack patterns and anomalies.
• Define analytical questions and data requirements needed to investigate suspected fraud vectors.
• Work with data, product and technology partners to obtain and interpret information needed during investigations.
• Develop repeatable analytical approaches that enable faster, more consistent investigation of future attacks.
• Translate complex analysis into clear findings, visualizations and executive-level insights.
• Document evidence, assumptions, confidence levels, data limitations and outstanding questions.

All About You

• The ideal candidate is a highly analytical fraud professional with strong investigative judgment and intellectual curiosity. You are comfortable working through complex and incomplete information, developing and testing hypotheses, and distinguishing what the evidence demonstrates from what remains to be proven.
• You should have:

• Strong experience in payment fraud, fraud analytics, investigations, operations, intelligence or a related discipline.
• Strong knowledge of the European payments and fraud environment.
• Strong understanding of issuers, acquirers, merchants, payment service providers and other ecosystem participants.
• Knowledge of payment-card and digital-payment fraud; familiarity with account-opening and account-to-account fraud is desirable.
• Demonstrated ability to investigate complex fraud events and identify patterns across transaction and operational data.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including working with complex datasets and translating findings into action.
• Ability to operate effectively during fast-moving events with incomplete information and changing priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills across technical and business audiences.
• Ability to work across functions, markets and cultures in a highly matrixed organization.
• Strong judgment, attention to detail and a continuous-learning mindset.
• Ability to influence stakeholders through expertise, evidence and collaboration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience within a payment network, issuer, acquirer, bank, fintech, payment service provider or financial-services organization.
• Experience investigating complex or coordinated payment fraud attacks.
• Experience with fraud monitoring, transaction analytics, authentication, authorization or payment-network data.
• Familiarity with European fraud patterns across card-present, card-not-present and digital payments.
• Experience analyzing fraud involving authentication, tokenized payments or emerging payment channels.
• Experience translating fraud analysis into controls, mitigation strategies, product requirements or operating recommendations.
• Experience communicating complex investigation findings to senior stakeholders.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.