[Hiring] Manager, Fraud Prevention @Western Governors University

Role Description

At WGU, protecting the integrity of the student enrollment experience is critical to our mission and regulatory responsibilities. As Manager, Fraud Prevention, you will lead the team responsible for detecting, investigating, and resolving suspected fraudulent activity across the student admissions and enrollment lifecycle. This role sits within the Office of Admissions and Credential Evaluation and plays a key role in safeguarding the enrollment process, protecting Title IV federal financial aid funds, and ensuring compliance with applicable federal and state regulations.

What You'll Do

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of four Fraud Analysts, including workload distribution, quality review, performance management, and career development.
• Own fraud detection and case management workflows spanning Registration and Onboarding, ensuring consistent, well-documented decision making.
• Serve as the operational owner of fraud detection platform configuration, rule tuning, and score-threshold calibration in partnership with Software Engineering and platform vendors.
• Monitor fraud trends, fraud rings, and emerging typologies, escalating risks and recommending control enhancements.
• Partner with Admissions, Financial Aid, Compliance, Legal, Registrar, IT Security, and other stakeholders to strengthen fraud prevention practices while maintaining a positive student experience.
• Lead root-cause analysis on confirmed fraud incidents and implement corrective actions involving processes, policies, and systems.
• Drive process improvements, automation opportunities, and reporting enhancements that improve fraud detection accuracy and analyst effectiveness.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Five years of work experience including fraud prevention, fraud investigations, identity verification, risk operations, or a closely related compliance/operations function.
• 1+ years of people management or team lead experience, with demonstrated ability to coach and develop analysts.
• Working knowledge of identity verification concepts (device/behavioral signals, document verification, KYC-style checks) and fraud case management workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to read, interpret, and apply regulatory requirements to operational practice.
• Strong analytical skills with experience reviewing dashboards, fraud indicators, case volume metrics, and risk scoring outputs.
• Excellent judgment, communication, collaboration, and decision-making capabilities in complex fraud and compliance environments.

Requirements

• Experience in higher education admissions, enrollment operations, financial aid, or student services, particularly within a large or online institution.
• Direct experience with Title IV compliance, the Higher Education Act, FERPA, GLBA, or BIPA in a practical operating environment.
• Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) or similar fraud/risk credential, along with experience using fraud detection platforms, Salesforce, Databricks, or comparable analytics tools.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare.
• Health savings account and flexible spending account.
• Basic and voluntary life insurance.
• Disability coverage.
• Accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages.
• Legal and identity theft coverage.
• Retirement savings plan.
• Wellbeing program.
• Discounted WGU tuition.
• Flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual.
• Flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual.
• 11 paid holidays and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

Company Description

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders.