AJAY BHARADWAJ
Fremont,CA
Summary
Fraud, Trust & Safety, and platform abuse leader with 10+ years of experience designing safeguards, enforcement strategies, and user protection systems across fintech and e-commerce platforms. Specialized in mitigating account takeover, scams, social engineering, identity abuse, and coordinated fraud while balancing user protection and business growth. Experienced in leveraging AI tools to enhance fraud investigations, monitoring, strategy development, and operational decision-making.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
Work History
Staff Data Scientist - Fraud Strategy lead
PayPal
San Jose, CA
10.2020 - Current
- Led a team of data scientists, responsible for fraud prevention and platform integrity strategy across Venmo products supporting over $20B+ TPV per month, including Peer-to-Peer payments, Pay with Venmo, Business Profiles, and Goods & Services transactions.
- Own fraud policy, enforcement strategy, and abuse safeguards for crypto trade and transfer experiences across PayPal and Venmo, including expansion of PYUSD stablecoin capabilities to 60 countries while balancing fraud loss mitigation, user trust, and transaction growth.
- Partner cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Data Science, Customer Support, Disputes, and Operations teams to identify emerging fraud trends and design scalable safeguards against bank fraud, tech scams, account takeover, collusion, social engineering, and coordinated abuse patterns.
- Designed and implemented fraud prevention strategies across critical user checkpoints including login, authentication, onboarding, and payments, leveraging internal risk models and third-party intelligence solutions to reduce fraud losses while maintaining historically low false positive rates.
- Leveraged generative AI tools, including Claude, to accelerate fraud investigations, develop fraud strategies, and enhance monitoring and enforcement workflows, contributing to a 40% reduction in fraud rates while improving operational efficiency.
- Built AI-assisted monitoring, alerting, and investigative workflows that improved fraud detection, reduced manual review effort, and increased analyst productivity.
Sr. Fraud Risk Analyst
Intuit
Mountain View, CA
01.2019 - 10.2020
- Managed fraud risk strategy and portfolio analytics for QuickBooks Capital, monitoring risk across the lending lifecycle and identifying emerging fraud and abuse trends.
- Developed risk policies and decisioning strategies that reduced fraud exposure while supporting portfolio growth and customer experience objectives.
- Partnered with Underwriting, Operations, and Product teams to investigate loss drivers, implement policy improvements, and strengthen lending safeguards.
Fraud Risk Analyst
EBay
San Jose, CA
06.2017 - 01.2019
- Investigated buyer and seller fraud patterns across onboarding, authentication, payments, and disputes to identify emerging abuse vectors.
- Built suspicious login and payment detection capabilities in partnership with Identity teams, reducing seller account takeover bad rates by 30%.
- Partnered with Operations, Product, and Policy teams to improve enforcement strategies, mitigate abuse, and strengthen marketplace trust.
Risk Analyst
JP Morgan Chase
Columbus, OH
06.2014 - 06.2017
- Supported development of digital financial products by defining underwriting and risk frameworks in partnership with Product and Engineering teams.
- Analyzed portfolio performance, fraud indicators, and emerging risk trends to support business and risk management decisions.
- Partnered with Operations teams to investigate loss patterns and recommend risk mitigation strategies.
Education
Master of Science - Management Information Systems
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA05-2014
Skills
- Fraud Prevention, Trust & Safety, Platform Integrity
- Abuse Detection, Investigations & Enforcement Strategy
- Account Takeover (ATO), Bank fraud, Chargeback, Collusion, Social Engineering & Scam Prevention
- AI-Driven Risk Analytics, Policy Development & Decisioning
- Cross-Functional Leadership & Stakeholder Management
- SQL, BigQuery, Tableau, SAS, Jupyter Notebooks
Timeline
Staff Data Scientist - Fraud Strategy lead
PayPal
10.2020 - Current
Sr. Fraud Risk Analyst
Intuit
01.2019 - 10.2020
Fraud Risk Analyst
EBay
06.2017 - 01.2019
Risk Analyst
JP Morgan Chase
06.2014 - 06.2017
Master of Science - Management Information Systems
Carnegie Mellon University