Payments Product Owner

The Payment Services Product Owner is a senior individual contributor who owns the lifecycle, technical readiness, vendor governance, and measurable performance of assigned payment products. The role navigates both technical and non-technical environments, transforming product requirements into outstanding end-user experiences that achieve payment roadmap commitments. It leads through expertise, governance, facilitation, and mentorship rather than direct people management, and exercises decision authority within formally delegated product responsibilities; final legal, procurement, budget, contract, architecture, and risk acceptance authorities remain with the authorized functions.

Responsibilities

Own the strategy and multiyear roadmap for assigned payment products; Establish and maintain prioritized product backlogs; Develop business cases and investment recommendations and measure realized benefits after implementation; Evaluate emerging payment capabilities, including AI, automation, and personalization strategies; Own product requirements and technical readiness for assigned payment products; Lead product-side analysis of APIs, batch and real-time file transmissions, middleware, tokenization, digital channel integrations, and core system dependencies; Define and validate requirements, control expectations, acceptance criteria, and test scenarios; Govern release readiness and decide or recommend go/no-go within delegated authority; Lead product-side incident analysis, root cause evaluation, and corrective action tracking; Own assigned vendor relationships from due diligence and selection through implementation, performance governance, renewal recommendation, transition, and exit planning; Establish vendor governance cadences and scorecards; Monitor contractual commitments, billing and invoice reviews, and service level performance; Lead complex, cross-functional payment projects and programs from business case through post-implementation review; Lead cross-functional product governance across Payments, IT, middleware, digital services, Operations, Marketing, Compliance, Risk, and Finance; Represent assigned payment products in departmental and enterprise forums and deliver executive-ready reporting; Define, monitor, and report product performance measures and lead corrective action for material variances; Own identification, mitigation tracking, and escalation of operational, technology, third-party, member, and regulatory risks; Provide technical leadership, standards, knowledge transfer, and mentorship without supervisory responsibility; Make documented business acceptance and escalation decisions within delegated authority

Requirements

Bachelor's degree (B.A.) from an accredited college or university (preferred), or an equivalent combination of education and minimum five years of related payment experience at a financial institution or payment facilitator; Minimum three years of product owner/manager and/or equivalent vendor management experience; Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional payment projects or programs from business case and requirements through implementation, stabilization, and post-implementation review; Demonstrated experience governing vendor performance, including service levels, roadmap commitments, corrective actions, and escalation; Experience collaborating with business-line owners, vendors, and stakeholders to integrate payment experiences, and developing business cases, performance measures, and executive-level reporting; High degree of knowledge of payment channels with the technical acumen to analyze and resolve issues involving APIs, batch files, tokenization, middleware, and integrations; Ability to synthesize diverse business, technical, risk, vendor, and financial information to define an optimal path and make informed decisions, including in ambiguous situations; Ability to lead through influence, facilitate cross-functional governance, negotiate priorities, escalate constructively, and mentor peers without supervisory authority; Ability to organize and prioritize work, balance competing demands and deadlines, and function autonomously within delegated authority; Ability to read, analyze, and interpret contracts, service levels, technical procedures, and governmental regulations in partnership with authorized experts; Excellent analytical, written, verbal, documentation, facilitation, executive presentation, and teamwork skills, with demonstrated ability to drive innovation

Benefits

Pay-for-performance compensation program including bonuses for all employees; Competitive benefits package