Payment Operations Lead

About the role

Mercury is building a comprehensive financial platform for startups. This role focuses on strengthening the operational backbone that supports our payment systems. You will lead a team to ensure the smooth and reliable movement of customer funds across various payment methods.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Guide and develop a team responsible for supporting Mercury Bank's payment infrastructure, ensuring they have clear objectives, high standards, and the necessary support.
• Establish and grow payment operations functions for international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks, including defining workflows, escalation procedures, controls, and quality benchmarks.
• Apply extensive payments knowledge to operational decisions, assisting the team with exceptions, investigations, returns, rejections, recalls, and partner-specific requirements.
• Enhance operational efficiency by improving processes, introducing new tools, implementing automation, and developing AI-driven workflows, dashboards, and measurement systems.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Banking Partnerships, and other Operations teams to identify and resolve bottlenecks and build scalable payment operations.
• Define and monitor key performance indicators for payment operations, such as productivity, quality, service level agreement adherence, exception trends, and payment rail performance.
• Foster a team culture centered on accountability, urgency, and high-quality work, ensuring everyone understands the impact of their contributions.

Requirements

• 3-5+ years of experience in payments, banking operations, payment operations, business operations, or a similar operational field, preferably within a financial institution, bank, fintech, or regulated technology company.
• Profound understanding of payment rails including international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks, with knowledge of money movement operations, payment exceptions, operational risk, controls, and supporting systems.
• Proven experience leading, coaching, or managing an operations team, with a history of setting clear expectations, improving team performance, and establishing effective operating rhythms.
• A strong desire to improve operational scalability through process enhancements, tooling, automation, AI, documentation, dashboards, and thoughtful performance measurement.
• Familiarity with operating within a regulated environment, balancing speed, customer experience, risk, compliance, and operational quality.
• Excellent communication skills, maintaining clarity and composure during complex, cross-functional, urgent, or sensitive situations.
• A high degree of personal ownership; proactively identifying and addressing system fragilities, ambiguities, or manual processes.
• Ability to work effectively across different departments, including Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, and Banking Partnerships, to translate operational needs into system improvements.

Nice to have

• Experience with AI or machine learning applications in operational contexts.

Skills & tools

• Payment rails (international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, checks)
• Operational risk and controls
• Process improvement methodologies
• Data analysis and dashboarding
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Team leadership and coaching

Practical notes

• Base salary range for US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $135,000 - $168,700 USD.
• Base salary range for US employees outside of New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $121,500 - $151,800 USD.
• Total compensation includes base salary, equity (stock options/RSUs), and benefits.
• Mercury is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.