The Opportunity

We are working with a large, multi-location consumer organization that is making a significant investment in modernizing its enterprise payment capabilities.

The company is building out a dedicated Enterprise Payments function to support payment processing across a complex, high-volume environment that includes physical locations, digital commerce and other customer-facing channels. A major payment processing transformation is already underway, making this an opportunity to join at an important stage and help shape the future direction of the organization.

The Senior Manager – Enterprise Payment Systems will serve as the technology leader for this emerging function. This individual will take ownership of the payment technology strategy, build and lead the team, oversee major payment initiatives, and establish the processes and operating structure needed to support the environment long term.

This is not a role for someone looking to simply maintain an established payments organization. The right person will enjoy building, solving problems, creating structure where needed, and operating in an environment that moves quickly and continues to evolve.

What You'll Be Responsible For

Build and Lead the Enterprise Payments Function

• Help establish and mature a dedicated enterprise payments technology organization.
• Build, lead and develop a team that may include Payment Systems Engineers, Business Analysts/Product Owners, architects and other technical resources.
• Establish appropriate processes, standards, operating practices and team responsibilities as the function grows.
• Provide technical and organizational leadership while remaining close enough to the technology to challenge assumptions and guide complex decisions.

Lead Payment Modernization

• Take a leadership role in a major enterprise payment processing transformation already underway.
• Provide direction across payment processor and gateway integrations, payment services, transaction flows and related technologies.
• Help define the future-state architecture and roadmap for enterprise payments.
• Lead initiatives involving authorization, capture, settlement, refunds, chargebacks, reconciliation and other elements of the payment lifecycle.
• Support payment capabilities across multiple channels, including point-of-sale and digital transactions.

Payment Architecture & Integration

• Provide leadership around scalable payment services, APIs and integration architecture.
• Help establish an enterprise payment abstraction/orchestration approach that provides flexibility across processors, gateways and payment providers.
• Oversee integrations with acquiring banks, payment processors, gateways, terminal providers and other external partners.
• Ensure payment solutions are scalable, resilient, observable and supportable in a high-volume enterprise environment.

POS & Omnichannel Payments

• Provide technology leadership for payment capabilities supporting a large distributed physical footprint.
• Oversee POS payment integrations, payment terminal technologies and related certification initiatives.
• Support an increasingly connected payment ecosystem spanning physical and digital customer experiences.
• Help ensure a consistent and reliable payment experience across channels.

Security, Compliance & Reliability

• Ensure payment platforms and integrations meet PCI-DSS and other applicable security requirements.
• Partner closely with Security, Compliance, Finance and other stakeholders around payment risk and controls.
• Drive appropriate use of tokenization, encryption and other technologies designed to protect payment data.
• Establish strong operational practices around monitoring, incident response, availability, business continuity and disaster recovery.

Vendor & Partner Management

• Manage relationships with payment processors, gateways, acquiring banks, technology vendors and implementation partners.
• Participate in vendor selection, contract discussions, SLA development and ongoing performance management.
• Hold external partners accountable for service, reliability and delivery commitments.
• Identify opportunities to improve payment performance, capabilities and overall cost effectiveness.

What We're Looking For

The successful candidate will bring substantial experience within enterprise payment technology and enough technical depth to lead experienced engineers, architects and external partners.

Ideal experience includes:

• 10+ years of experience involving enterprise payments, fintech, financial technology or related payment platforms.
• Previous leadership of payment technology teams or complex enterprise payment initiatives.
• Strong knowledge of the end-to-end payment ecosystem, including processors, gateways, acquiring banks, card networks, settlement and reconciliation.
• Experience leading payment processor implementations, migrations or major modernization programs.
• Strong understanding of retail or other high-volume, multi-channel payment environments.
• Knowledge of card-present and card-not-present transactions, POS payment technologies and digital payment capabilities.
• Strong understanding of PCI-DSS, tokenization, encryption and payment security.
• Experience working with APIs, integrations and modern/cloud-based application architectures.
• Experience managing vendors and large external technology partners.
• Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, architects, business leaders, finance, operations and senior executives.
• Proven ability to build teams and establish processes in an evolving environment.

The Environment

This organization operates differently from a highly structured, heavily siloed enterprise.

The environment is fast-moving and collaborative, and successful people tend to be comfortable wearing multiple hats. The organization has grown rapidly and continues to mature its technology practices, so there is a genuine opportunity to help build rather than simply inherit established processes.

The ideal person will bring the discipline and experience of a mature enterprise environment while retaining the flexibility and urgency of a builder.

You should be comfortable:

• Working through ambiguity.
• Making decisions without waiting for every process to be perfectly defined.
• Collaborating across organizational boundaries.
• Building relationships and influencing without relying solely on authority.
• Creating appropriate structure without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Moving between strategic leadership and detailed technical discussions when necessary.

Why This Role Is Interesting

This is an opportunity to build and lead a critical technology function rather than step into a mature organization where everything has already been established.

The payment transformation is already underway, senior leadership is actively involved, and the organization is assembling the team that will ultimately own and support the platform going forward.

For someone with deep payments experience who enjoys building teams, modernizing technology and creating scalable enterprise capabilities, this offers the chance to have a significant and visible impact.