Payments Governance Manager

Step into a high-impact leadership role at the center of payments governance and third-party oversight. You will shape scalable governance strategies, strengthen risk identification and issue evaluation, and translate industry, regulatory, and payment network requirements into decisive action. This role offers the opportunity to lead a talented team, deliver transformation programs, and influence senior stakeholders across a complex payments ecosystem.

As a payments governance operations manager in payments governance operations, you will lead the modernization of a complex oversight function supporting third-party payment processing and related relationships. You will set strategy, drive scalable governance and monitoring, and partner across functions to strengthen controls, issue management, and decision-making.

Job responsibilities

- Set the strategic direction for payments governance, balancing disciplined risk management with responsible business growth across products, regions, and regulatory environments
- Lead and develop a multi-level team through clear priorities, coaching, performance management, and succession planning
- Provide subject matter expertise on payments risk, payment network rules, and applicable regulatory and policy requirements impacting third-party payment processing
- Direct the evaluation of issues, risk events, and control gaps by assessing materiality and root cause, defining mitigation plans, and driving timely escalation and closure
- Own the governance framework for onboarding due diligence, assessments, periodic monitoring, evidence standards, quality assurance, documentation retention, and remediation tracking
- Deliver a modernization roadmap to replace manual processes with scalable workflows, automation, analytics, and technology-enabled monitoring
- Lead transformation programs end-to-end, including business case development, scope and resource planning, change adoption, and executive reporting
- Use risk indicators, control results, and portfolio trends to identify vulnerabilities, prioritize interventions, and measure governance outcomes
- Partner with product, technology, risk, fraud, credit, compliance, legal, sales, finance, and operations stakeholders to embed governance requirements across the client and product lifecycle
- Advise senior stakeholders on risk posture, trade-offs, escalations, remediation plans, and readiness decisions with clear, structured communication
- Promote a culture of ownership, integrity, continuous improvement, and constructive challenge to strengthen governance and controls

Required qualifications, capabilities and skills

- Leadership experience in payments, merchant acquiring, financial services, third-party risk, governance, operations, or another highly regulated environment
- Experience leading complex, cross-functional programs from strategy through implementation, including governance, milestones, dependencies, and change management
- Demonstrated ability to evaluate risk and control effectiveness, identify emerging risk themes, and drive appropriate escalation and remediation
- Experience using data, key risk indicators, and trend analysis to generate actionable insights and influence decisions
- Ability to partner effectively with technology teams to translate business and control requirements into implementable solutions
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex topics clearly to senior stakeholders, including through written materials and presentations
- Demonstrated judgment and decision-making under pressure, including managing sensitive escalations and driving accountable resolution
- Demonstrated people leadership, including coaching, talent development, and fostering an inclusive team culture
- Willingness and ability to travel as needed ( TBD travel frequency/expectations)

Preferred qualifications, capabilities and skills

- Experience with payment facilitator, marketplace, staged digital wallet operator, business payment service provider, full liability submitter, or comparable third-party payment models
- Knowledge of major payment brand program rules and acquirer obligations (for example, Visa and Mastercard)
- Experience modernizing governance, risk, or operations through workflow technology, automation, artificial intelligence, analytics, or digital reporting
- Experience designing or enhancing risk-based monitoring, issue management, control testing, due diligence, quality assurance, or remediation frameworks
- Working knowledge of analytics and project delivery tools (for example, Alteryx, Tableau, Microsoft Project, or similar platforms)
- Experience supporting regulatory examinations, audits, payment brand reviews, or senior governance forums
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in business, finance, risk management, technology, operations, or a related discipline