Sales Director Payments

Our client is a profitable, high-growth financial infrastructure business connecting applications directly to bank accounts across Europe and beyond - powering account-to-account payments, enriched financial data, and intelligent money movement at scale. Their customers include some of the world's largest technology companies, leading fintechs, and major payment platforms.

The market they operate in is about to get significantly bigger. New European regulation is expanding the scope of open banking and open finance, and agentic AI is starting to move payments and financial data on behalf of users - all of which runs on exactly the kind of infrastructure this company provides.

As part of their next phase of growth, they are establishing a newly regulated entity in Ireland to anchor their EU operations - and they are hiring one of its first two employees.

The Role

This is a first hire on the ground in Ireland. You will be the sales lead for the new Irish entity, owning enterprise new business across the Payments vertical - PSPs, payment processors, acquirers, issuers, and banks with payment arms. You'll build your pipeline from first principles in a market with strong regulatory tailwinds, working hand-in-hand with a small founding team on the ground and the wider commercial organisation across Europe.

Because the entity is newly regulated, this role carries genuine weight: Dublin residence is a firm requirement, and the position comes with formal responsibilities within the new EU entity - this is a seat at the table, not a satellite sales job. As the entity scales, there is a clear path to building and leading a local commercial team.

The profile they're after mirrors their most senior commercial hires elsewhere: someone who wakes up thinking about pipeline, who is genuinely obsessed with the payments landscape - fiat, crypto, stablecoins, and the rails that connect them - and who treats AI as a fundamental operating advantage rather than a buzzword.

Key Responsibilities

• New business: originate, build, and convert a high-quality pipeline of enterprise opportunities across the EU payments ecosystem, from first contact through to contract signature

• Founding-team ownership: help stand up the commercial side of a brand-new regulated EU entity, shaping how the company goes to market from Ireland

• Executive relationships: develop and maintain C-suite and senior stakeholder relationships across target accounts, and lead complex multi-stakeholder negotiations with confidence

• AI-first ways of working: embed AI across account research, personalisation, proposal quality, competitive intelligence, and deal strategy

• Market presence: represent the business credibly in the European payments ecosystem and feed market intelligence back into product and go-to-market strategy

Your Profile

• Significant enterprise sales experience in payments, open banking, or financial services, with a track record of closing large, complex deals

• Experience selling to payment companies - PSPs, acquirers, issuers, and banks - rather than to merchants; you understand how these organisations buy, build, and partner

• Fluent across the full payments stack - card schemes, A2A and real-time rails, stablecoin settlement, and crypto-native architectures; backgrounds from stablecoin or crypto-native infrastructure businesses are genuinely welcome

• A hunter, not a farmer: high energy, hungry, driven, and comfortable building pipeline from zero in a new market

• A demonstrable, hands-on commitment to using AI tools throughout your sales process - and the ability to show how it has raised your output

• Based in (or willing to relocate to) Dublin - a firm requirement given the responsibilities attached to the new entity

• Strong commercial acumen and exceptional storytelling: you can turn complex technical propositions into compelling business cases

Why Join

• Genuine founding-hire ownership: one of the first two people in a new regulated EU entity, with formal responsibilities and direct exposure to the executive team

• A profitable, growing business at the centre of a market with strong regulatory and technological tailwinds

• A clear path from founding sales lead to building and leading a local team

• A high-standard, fast-moving culture that prizes quality, curiosity, integrity, and bias to action