Head of Product Operations-Payments-Executive Director

You are passionate about operational excellence and delivering high-impact solutions for merchants! This could be the role for you!

Join a team passionate about operational excellence and delivering impactful solutions for merchants! Acquiring Payment Rails, part of JPMorgan Chase & Co., is a global leader in payment processing, handling over $2 trillion in transactions annually. We are building a cutting-edge merchant acquiring platform to enable global commerce, requiring collaboration across technology, product management, and business readiness.

As the Head of Product Operations within the Merchant Services Platform Product organization, you will promote operational excellence, optimize product delivery processes, and enable our product teams to deliver high-impact solutions for merchants. You will oversee the implementation and continuous improvement of Agile practices, manage cross-functional initiatives, and ensure alignment between product strategy and execution.

Job responsibilities

• Operational Leadership: Develop and execute the product operations strategy to support the Merchant Services Platform's goals; Establish and refine processes, tools, and metrics to improve product team efficiency and effectiveness.
• Agile Enablement: Champion Agile methodologies across the product organization, ensuring teams are equipped with best practices and frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, etc.); Facilitate Agile ceremonies, retrospectives, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Managers, Engineering, Design, and other stakeholders to drive alignment and remove operational bottlenecks; Coordinate with business, technology, and support teams to ensure seamless product delivery.
• Performance Management: Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) for product delivery, team velocity, and operational health; Analyze data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Resource Planning & Budgeting: Oversee resource allocation, capacity planning, and budgeting for product teams; Support hiring, onboarding, and professional development of product operations staff.
• Process Optimization: Lead initiatives to streamline workflows, improve communication, and enhance transparency across teams; Implement tools and systems to support Agile product development and reporting.
• Change Management: Drive adoption of new processes, tools, and organizational changes; Provide training and support to teams transitioning to new ways of working.

• Minimum of 10 years of experience, including experience in program/project management in an Agile development environment
• Financial services expertise required
• Self-starter able to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative and cross-functional environment that is results-driven
• Rigorous, logical thinker with ability to identify and articulate rationale, assumptions, and risks
• Strong end-to-end problem-solving skills including deconstructing problems, prioritizing issues, structuring analysis, identifying implications, and proposing solutions; Excellent relationship-building skills, with ability to establish trust and credibility, and build shared understanding across lines of business and functions, work well in cross-functional teams, and influence key stakeholders
• History of managing varied teams of professionals in project-based environments with proven ability to coach and develop the team; Openness to an environment of active developmental feedback from peers
• Strong time-management, organizational skills, and attention to detail
• Capacity to handle a highly complex effort, with ability to objectively prioritize across multiple workstreams; Fortitude to persevere when confronted with difficult challenges
• Excellent written, visual, and verbal communication skills, including ability to communicate technical topics to a non-technical audience and business needs to a technical audience
• Superior judgment to mitigate risk and foster an environment where risk/control issues are escalated and creative solutions are identified; Skilled at Jira, SharePoint, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Flexibility for occasional domestic and international travel

• Bachelor's degree; graduate degree in a business or technical field preferred; PMP certification a plus
• Knowledge of programming languages to facilitate automation of reporting a plus
• Strong preference for payments industry knowledge