Payments Technical Product Manager – Retail Tech & Fintech

Location: New York City (100% On-Site)

ROLE SUMMARY

Our client is seeking a Payments Technical Product Manager with deep fintech expertise, strong technical fluency, and the ability to execute in a fast-paced, founder-led environment. This role is responsible for expanding and modernizing an end-to-end payment processing platform, including card-present, card-not-present, PayFac enablement, settlement, reconciliation, fraud, and gateway performance.

In this role, you will own critical components of the payments stack and work closely with the SVP of Payment Products, as well as Payments Sales and Operations teams, to define requirements, enhance merchant experiences, optimize processing economics, and drive platform growth.

A critical aspect of this role is serving as the technical payments expert in customer-facing situations—presenting, demonstrating, and troubleshooting payments solutions with prospective customers, existing partners, and merchant stakeholders.

This position requires a strong understanding of payment rails, merchant acquiring, ISO/MSP models, processor integrations, and the full merchant lifecycle (boarding → underwriting → activation → processing → settlement → reporting).

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

Payments & Fintech Expertise

• 5–8 years of product management experience, including at least 3 years in payments, fintech, or merchant services
• Strong understanding of merchant acquiring, ISO/MSP structures, payment gateways, and card brand rules
• Deep technical knowledge of payment processing architecture, including authorization flows, settlement mechanics, exception handling, and system integrations
• Experience supporting card-present and card-not-present payments, EMV flows, tokenization, and routing logic
• Familiarity with Level I, Level II, and Level III data and interchange optimization strategies
• Experience with fraud tooling, risk scoring, PCI DSS, 3D Secure, device security, and P2PE
• Hands-on exposure to processor integrations (e.g., Global Payments, Fiserv, TSYS, Stripe, Adyen)
• Strong understanding of PayFac models, KYC/KYB/AML requirements, underwriting workflows, and onboarding APIs
• Knowledge of alternative payment methods including ACH, RTP, wallets, BNPL, and QR payments
• Experience performing third-party vendor due diligence and eligibility assessments for platform integrations

Technical & Platform Skills

• Strong API and SDK literacy with the ability to collaborate deeply with engineering teams
• Experience integrating payments with POS, RMS, ERP, and eCommerce platforms
• Comfortable analyzing API logs, payment traces, decline codes, and reconciliation data
• Ability to diagnose and troubleshoot complex payment issues in real time, including terminal connectivity, processor responses, and gateway configuration issues
• Proven ability to translate complex payment workflows into clear, actionable product requirements

Customer-Facing & Communication Skills

• Exceptional presentation and demonstration skills, able to explain technical payment concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Consultative approach to uncovering customer pain points and converting them into product solutions
• Experience supporting technical sales, proofs of concept, and solution architecture discussions
• Ability to establish credibility with merchants, partners, and executive stakeholders through deep subject-matter expertise
• Skilled at managing objections, answering technical questions, and troubleshooting live during customer engagements

Execution & Delivery

• Demonstrated success delivering high-impact payments features end-to-end
• Experience working within Agile product and engineering environments
• Strong PRD and user story writing skills, including acceptance criteria and cross-functional alignment
• Data-driven mindset with experience analyzing approval rates, decline drivers, processing costs, fraud metrics, disputes, and settlement timing

Leadership & Collaboration

• Strong communicator with executive presence
• Ability to influence sales, account management, operations, compliance, and support teams
• High-ownership mindset with the ability to thrive amid changing priorities
• Trusted payments subject-matter expert internally and externally

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

Payments Platform Ownership

• Own key components of our client’s payments platform, including gateway, terminals, routing logic, APIs, fraud tools, and reporting
• Define and prioritize requirements to improve reliability, scalability, and performance
• Drive payment optimizations such as interchange efficiency, routing logic, processor performance, and retry strategies

Merchant & Payments Lifecycle

• Support merchant onboarding and ensure KYC/KYB/AML workflows meet regulatory and partner requirements
• Partner with underwriting, risk, and operations teams to improve approval rates and activation timelines
• Define workflows for chargebacks, disputes, alerts, and risk dashboards

Processor, Gateway & Vendor Integrations

• Lead integrations with processors, gateway partners, fraud providers, and alternative payment vendors
• Document API requirements, certification processes, transaction testing, and versioning updates
• Stay current on network mandates, compliance updates, and processor release cycles

Customer-Facing Technical Expertise & Support

• Deliver product demonstrations and technical presentations to prospective customers, partners, and executive stakeholders
• Serve as the technical payments authority during sales meetings, RFPs, and partner integration discussions
• Troubleshoot payment issues directly with customers and partners, including declines, settlement discrepancies, terminal issues, and integration challenges
• Lead technical discovery sessions to map customer needs to platform capabilities
• Provide ongoing technical consultation to strategic accounts and partners
• Create training materials, technical documentation, and best-practice guides

Platform Modernization & Strategic Initiatives

• Support migration from legacy payments infrastructure to modern microservices and MFE-based architectures
• Participate in build/partner/buy evaluations for terminals, processors, fraud tools, and gateway components
• Contribute to long-term roadmap planning, including global payments expansion, new payment methods, and evolving compliance requirements

WHY THIS ROLE IS COMPELLING

This is a high-impact opportunity for a payments-focused product leader to:

• Shape the end-to-end merchant payments experience at scale
• Work directly with senior leadership with high visibility and ownership
• Act as the face of payments technology to customers and partners
• Drive measurable improvements in revenue, merchant satisfaction, and processing performance

This role is ideal for candidates seeking ownership, complexity, fintech depth, direct customer engagement, and meaningful influence over a modern payments platform.