Manager, Payment Operations

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Manager, Payment Operations based in India.

This role offers the opportunity to lead a critical payment operations function supporting a global, always-on payments network. You will oversee day-to-day operational performance across a 24x7 environment, ensuring strong queue management, timely resolution, effective escalations, and consistently high-quality investigations. The position combines people leadership with hands-on operational ownership, giving you direct influence over processes, performance, and team capability. You will develop analysts from onboarding through independent case ownership while establishing rigorous quality-control and training programs. You will also serve as a senior escalation point for complex payment issues and coordinate with Engineering, Product, and partner-facing leadership when required. This is an ideal opportunity for an experienced payments professional who enjoys building scalable operations and improving how teams deliver under demanding service-level expectations.

Accountabilities:

• Own shift design, rostering, coverage planning, and operational handoffs across a 24x7 environment, including leave, holiday, and surge planning.
• Manage live operational queues, ensuring partner queries and detected payment exceptions are appropriately triaged, investigated, resolved, and closed within SLA.
• Own the operational escalation framework, personally handling the most complex cases and determining when issues should be escalated to Engineering, Product, or senior partner-facing stakeholders.
• Build and manage analyst onboarding, continuous training, certification, and competency-development programs.
• Develop analysts from initial onboarding through independent ownership of the full range of operational queries, using case performance to identify and address individual development needs.
• Establish and operate a quality-control program covering case sampling, investigation reviews, calibration, error classification, standards, and feedback loops.
• Monitor and own key operational metrics, including Time to Acknowledge (TTA), Time to Resolve (TTR), SLA compliance, volumes, and failure trends.
• Produce regular operational reporting and provide clear explanations of performance trends across shifts, partners, and payment rails.
• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve SOPs and operational runbooks to ensure documentation accurately reflects current practices.
• Lead process changes through effective communication, training, adoption verification, and performance measurement.
• Identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency, quality, scalability, and customer or partner experience.
• Remain hands-on in operational problem solving while providing leadership, coaching, and direction to the wider team.

Requirements:

• 8+ years of experience in payment operations, payment investigations, settlement operations, or a comparable operations function within payments, fintech, banking, or financial services.
• At least 2 years of direct people-management experience leading payment or operations analysts as a Team Lead, Assistant Manager, Manager, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated accountability for team performance and operational output, with a willingness to remain actively involved in complex operational work.
• Hands-on experience managing at least one full shift roster within a 24x7 or extended-coverage operation, including coverage planning, exceptions, and resource allocation.
• Proven experience designing and delivering analyst onboarding, training, ramp-up, certification, and competency-development programs.
• Demonstrated experience creating and maintaining SOPs, runbooks, operational documentation, and process standards.
• Strong knowledge of cross-border payments, including correspondent banking, SWIFT/MT103, local payment rails, reconciliation, exception handling, and settlement investigations.
• Strong analytical and data-driven approach, with the ability to establish targets, monitor operational metrics, interpret trends, and confidently explain performance results.
• Excellent escalation management, problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Experience building or improving operational processes in a growing or evolving environment is highly valued.
• Experience managing operations where customer or partner SLAs are critical to performance is an advantage.
• Exposure to stablecoins, cryptocurrency payment rails, digital assets, or other emerging financial technologies is a plus.
• Experience using AI-enabled tools to improve operational workflows, analysis, productivity, or quality is advantageous.
• Ability to work effectively in a remote-first environment while collaborating across teams, shifts, and geographies.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary and comprehensive total compensation package.
• Remote-first working environment within India.
• Opportunity to lead a critical 24x7 payment operations function supporting global financial infrastructure.
• Significant ownership over operational processes, team development, quality, and performance management.
• Exposure to cross-border payments, digital assets, stablecoin-related infrastructure, and emerging financial technologies.
• Opportunities to work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and senior operational stakeholders.
• Professional development through leadership, process-design, and operational transformation responsibilities.
• Inclusive and collaborative environment focused on integrity, innovation, continuous improvement, and excellence.
• Opportunities to develop expertise in advanced payment operations and rapidly evolving financial technology.