Associate Director, Payments

At Aztec, we’re committed to building and nurturing a diverse and inclusive workforce where everyone feels valued, respected, and able to grow. We know that different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences strengthen our business and we welcome applications from all individuals. So, if your experience doesn’t exactly match with every part of the job description, but you are excited about the role, we would still like to hear from you. If you are passionate, curious, innovative and data driven, you could still be a good fit.

About the role:

The purpose of this role is to lead the Payments function within the Banking Domain, ensuring it is robust, scalable and aligned to the Group’s strategic growth ambitions. The role is responsible for delivering an outstanding payments service to clients and internal stakeholders, while strengthening operational resilience, governance, technology enablement and service performance across jurisdictions.

Key Role Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage the end-to-end payments process, including the operating model, controls, configuration, performance management and continuous improvement

• Develop the future payments offering, ensuring it supports the Group’s strategic growth, jurisdictional requirements and client service ambitions

• Provide leadership and subject matter expertise across international payment rails, cross-border processing, payment hub solutions and related banking infrastructure

• Support the selection, implementation and ongoing optimisation of SaaS treasury management systems and payment technologies

• Manage relationships with key banking and technology providers, including negotiations to improve commercial, operational and service outcomes

• Work closely with Risk, Compliance, Technology, Operations and client-facing teams to maintain a strong governance and control framework

• Implement contingency and resilience plans to minimise disruption and support continuity of critical payment services

• Build and maintain reporting, dashboards and management information to monitor performance, identify risks and drive service improvement

• Ensure departmental OKRs, service standards and control obligations are consistently met

Skills, knowledge, expertise:

• Significant banking experience, ideally gained in a multi-jurisdictional financial services, fund administration, corporate services or banking environment

• Extensive experience of international payment systems, cross-border processing, payment messaging standards and banking connectivity

• Practical experience of SaaS treasury management systems, payment hubs, payment workflow tools and related implementation or optimisation activity

• Strong understanding of the payments processing cycle, operational controls, reconciliation, exception management and client service requirements

• Sound knowledge of relevant laws, regulations, industry standards and common practices across payments and banking operations

• Strong ownership and accountability, with the judgement to make decisions and drive outcomes in a fast-moving environment

• Excellent relationship-building skills, with the ability to work effectively across the Banking Domain, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Operations and client-facing teams

• Experience leading high-quality operational service teams across multiple jurisdictions to support business growth and service excellence

• Understanding of the asset servicing environment and the jurisdictions in which Aztec operates

• A strong service delivery mindset, with the ability and desire to deliver exceptional client service at scale

• Solution-oriented critical thinking and strong problem-solving capability

• Excellent organisational skills, with the discipline to meet deadlines, prioritise effectively and allocate resources efficiently

• Excellent attention to detail and a strong control mindset

• Understanding of the Aztec Risk Framework, including AML, and a commitment to internal policies, procedures and jurisdictional regulatory requirements

• Strong people leadership and management skills, with the ability to recruit, motivate, develop and retain a high-performing Payments team

We will provide relevant in-house training and support for professional development. You will need to be quick to learn new systems and confident building strong working relationships with colleagues, clients and external partners, as collaboration is central to how we deliver high-quality service.

We understand that everyone has different needs, and that’s why our employee package includes a variety of benefits. In addition to a competitive salary, here are some examples of the benefits that we may offer for our permanent roles:

• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Flexible, hybrid working
• Ability to work abroad for up to 3 weeks per annum
• Generous holiday allowance
• Pension scheme
• Private medical insurance, including eye care
• Life assurance (death in service and critical illness benefit)
• Worldwide travel insurance
• Health and wellbeing programmes
• On-site parking