Our Teams

A Closer Look At Our Risk Operations Team
Working on the Risk Operations team at DraftKings involves many responsibilities, including analyzing numbers and patterns, ensuring the safety of our customers, and making critical business decisions.
For Mayari, Senior Manager of Risk Payments & Withdrawals, all those responsibilities are part of creating an exceptional gaming experience for our customers when they use any one of our products. The Risk OpeMrations team is a critical function at DraftKings and works closely with the Customer Experience and Responsible Gaming teams to ensure the highest standards to deliver the ultimate customer experience. Learn more about Mayari and her team below.
When did you start at DraftKings? What do you do on the Risk Operations team?
I started at DraftKings in November 2021, in the middle of the NFL season. I started as an individual contributor and worked on different teams during my time here, from Risk to Payment Operations. Currently, I’m based in New Jersey and manage the Payment & Withdrawal Operations team, which falls under the larger Risk Operations organization.
In a nutshell, what does the Risk Operations team do?
The fundamental question the Risk team always asks is: Is this a risk to the customer or a risk to the business?
Our team decisively makes critical decisions to protect our customers’ identities and protect the business against suspicious activities such as money laundering. We minimize risk by reviewing irregular patterns and inconsistencies with the Anti-Money Laundering team.
What types of experiences do we look for when hiring for the Risk Operations team?
We have people on our team from all different backgrounds and experiences. In fact, lots of people come from our Customer Experience team since skills organically transfer to the Risk Operations team; Customer Experience Associates already know our product and inherently understand customer behavior. We need someone who is adept at problem-solving and easily recognizes patterns. Strong communication skills are crucial on any team, but especially important on our team because they must feel comfortable flagging potential issues before they snowball into an even bigger problem.
How does your team protect our customers and embody our customer-centricity philosophy?
While a large part of our role is protecting our customers to ensure everyone plays safely and responsibly, ultimately, we want customers to have a great time and experience playing on our platforms. We’re customer-obsessed; we contribute to a larger customer-centric organization and sometimes that means protecting potential customers against bad actors who might misuse others’ identities or financials. Our trained human eyes work to flag any machine or automated issues. Since the risk landscape and technology constantly change, we remain agile and use our best judgment through human checks and balances to make crucial decisions.
What are you most excited about in our company’s future?
DraftKings is taking many measures in our strategy against fraudulent behaviors since they can change quickly and frequently. We’re trying to be methodical when introducing new risk rules and guardrails. We’re evolving our security and tools to introduce to the workflow so we can continue to protect our customers and prevent bad actors from misusing our platform.
Why should someone consider joining Risk Operations?
We work as a team for the larger collective, staying vigilant so that the person on the next shift has fewer issues when we hand things off. We’re a global team - we also have teammates in Bulgaria whom we work closely with, and we all take accountability for each other’s work and actions. Our world continuously evolves with new challenges and new verticals. And if you love working with and looking at numbers, the Risk Operations team is a great place to use and stretch those skills.
If you’re ready to join a global team and make impactful decisions and contributions to our industry, check out open roles on the Risk Operations team.
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