Lead PayOps

Pennylane aims to become the most beloved financial Operating System of French SMEs and Accounting Firms. As Lead Payment Operations, you will be one of the first operational leaders joining a greenfield setup. You will own the operational execution of payment operations across SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, and cash / collateral management. Your mission will be to build, structure and scale the payment operations setup needed to support growing volumes, ensure reliable execution, manage incidents, and protect customer experience while embedding controls expected from a strong first line of defense.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end operational execution of payment operations across SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, and cash/collateral management; Ensure day-to-day reliability of payment operations including exception handling and issue resolution; Act as operational point of escalation for payment incidents; Build and improve the payment operations operating model with processes, SLAs, runbooks, and documentation; Design and embed first-line controls; Implement reconciliation, exception-management and incident-management practices; Define, monitor and report on payment operations KPIs; Partner with Product and Tech teams to shape payment back-office tooling and workflows; Build a structured incident-management framework; Manage external payment processing providers and partner banks; Recruit, onboard, train and manage the payment operations team

Requirements

5+ years of experience in payments operations, financial operations, treasury operations or operational risk in a regulated or high-volume environment; Strong exposure to payment operations across SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, cash management or related payment rails; Proven experience managing operational incidents including triage, escalation, root cause analysis and prevention; Experience designing scalable operational processes, SLAs, runbooks and controls; Experience working with Product and Tech teams on tooling, workflow improvements or automation; Experience managing or coordinating operational teams, ideally in a player/coach setup; Experience managing external operational stakeholders such as banks, PSPs, payment processors or other financial partners; Strong understanding of payment flows, operational failure modes, exceptions and controls; Good knowledge of first-line-of-defense expectations; Strong process mindset; Data-driven approach; Ability to translate operational pain points into Product/Tech requirements; Good judgment balancing reliability, customer experience, efficiency and risk; Ability to design pragmatic automation and tooling improvements; Rigorous, structured and accountable; Strong ownership mindset; Player/coach leadership; Excellent communication under pressure; Strong cross-functional collaboration; Customer-conscious; Pragmatic and solution-oriented; Strong pedagogy; Fluent French and English are mandatory; Based in France with strong preference for Paris; Regular on-site presence in Paris expected, partial remote possible but not fully remote

Nice to have

Experience in a regulated fintech, payment institution, EMI, bank, BaaS / embedded finance provider, or with a payment-institution licence setup

Benefits

25 vacation days paid by Pennylane; Competitive compensation package; Company shares; Budget to turn home into a more comfortable workspace; Monthly allowance to work from a coworking space; Access to 8000 fitness spaces in Europe via Gymlib; Latest Apple equipment; Ability to work remotely from country of residence in Europe within 2 hours of CET; Company events such as Tech Days and annual seminar; French contract with 6 to 12 RTT, 5 weeks PTO, lunch credits (Swile), Alan Blue healthcare cover and regular events in French cities