Director, Payment Operations

San FranciscoRemoteFullTime$185k–230k

ABOUT ZIP

Zip is the AI platform for enterprise procurement — built for humans and agents working together. By orchestrating procurement across teams, tools, and suppliers with the help of AI agents, companies can secure the resources they need to innovate faster than ever before.

The world's most influential enterprises trust Zip, including T-Mobile, OpenAI, AMD, Mars, Dollar Tree, and more. Together they've saved over $8 billion and processed over $500 billion in spend. Zip's team includes product leaders from Apple, Airbnb, and Meta, as well as former procurement leaders from United Health, Sanofi, MGM Resorts, Discover, and NASA.

Backed by Adams Street, Alkeon, BOND, CRV, DST, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator, Zip has raised $371 million, most recently at a $2.2 billion valuation and has been recognized by Forbes Fintech 50, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Inc. Best in Business, and LinkedIn Top Startups.

YOUR ROLE

We are looking for a business lead for our payment business to lead and elevate our payment product. This is a high-impact leadership role at the heart of Zip's flagship Zip Pay product — a role where you will shape the future of how customers are supported, how incidents are managed, and how our payments platform operates at scale.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

TEAM LEADERSHIP & PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

- Scale Zip's payment business from $14m to $50m in the next 4 years

- Ensure we have the industry leading payment product for our focus ICP

- Align cross functional teams on focus ICP and optimize the GTM assets, enablement, and sales process to win 90%+ of deals in our focus ICP

- Improve payment related CSAT.

- Drive product parity to industry leading payment providers. Drive product & GTM to become the industry leading Payment product across expanded ICP in the next 12 months

- Help launch Payment product successfully for enterprise clients.

- Develop long-term strategy for Zip Pay to support $50B payments annually

- Proactively identify systemic risks and work with Engineering and Product teams to prevent recurring issues.

RESPONSIBILITY

- Own the P&L for the Payment segment, setting financial goals and managing the business to achieve growth targets.

- Represent Zip leadership on critical enterprise Payment implementations during the sales process.

- Enable Product Managers to identify the resource plan and path to be the industry leading payment provider within 24 months.

- Work with the Product team to prioritize features to best serve our ICP and maximize CSAT improvement.

- Manage Payments Partnerships

- Help identify and find long term payment partners to process $50B+ payments volume

- Validate new features and revenue opportunities with existing clients.

- Enhance collaboration between Payment Ops and EPD to drive better process efficiency.

- Coordinate with PMM to develop assets, narratives and value propositions to effectively target buyers. Develop customer facing documentation and sales enablement

- Monitor payment health proactively to track issues ahead of time; working with engineers/finance to forecast transaction ARR and identify high potential oppy.

- Team leadership: build, lead, and mentor a high-performing team across GTM, marketing, product, and operations

QUALIFICATIONS

We're looking for a candidate who combines operational depth and business savy-ness with people leadership excellence. The ideal candidate brings:

- 10+ years of experience in payment business, or financial services operations, with at least 2 years in a people leadership role.

- Strong understanding of payment systems, processing flows, reconciliation, and settlement processes.

- Proven ability to lead and develop teams — you are known for bringing out the best in the people around you.

- Experience working directly on customer escalations and delivering exceptional, empathetic customer service.

- Data-driven mindset with experience tracking operational metrics, and using insights to drive decisions and recommendations, leveraging tools such as Claude.

- Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills and experience working alongside Engineering, Product, Finance, and Risk teams.

- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

NICE TO HAVE

- Familiarity with payment platforms with payment methods such as local bank transfers, and wires

- Background in compliance, fraud operations, or risk management in a payments context.

- Experience using ticketing systems (e.g., Zendesk) and operational tooling at scale.

- Bonus point if you have experience working with AI

This role will require you to work outside of business hours from time to time based on business needs.

The salary range for this role is $185,000-$230,000. The salary for this position is determined based on a variety of job-related factors that may include location, relevant experience, education, or particular skills and expertise.

PERKS & BENEFITS

At Zip, we're committed to providing our employees with everything they need to do their best work.

- 📈 Start-up equity

- 🦷 Full health, vision & dental coverage

- 🍽️ Catered lunches & dinners for SF employees

- 🚍 Commuter benefit

- 🚠 Team building events & happy hours

- 🌴 Flexible PTO

- 💻 Apple equipment plus home office budget

- 💸 401k plan

We're looking to hire Zipsters and that means hiring people who take ownership, communicate openly, have an underdog mindset, and are excited to increase the pace of innovation for every business in the world. We encourage all candidates to apply even if your experience doesn't exactly match up to our job description. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workspace where everyone (regardless of age, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and more) feels like they belong. We look forward to hearing from you!