Primary Must-Have Skills Experience & Domain Expertise: 8-15+ years in payments, banking, or financial services consulting with significant payments domain expertise.1 Program Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead payments modernization, transformation, operating model, or platform rationalization programs.1 Functional Knowledge: Strong understanding of payment products, processing, operations, and the end-to-end payment lifecycle.1 Data Architecture: Hands-on experience with payments data, including metadata, business dictionaries, data lineage, data domains, and business/technical mapping.1 Strategic Modeling: Ability to design coherent target-state models that connect business capabilities, processes, platforms, and underlying data.1 Soft Skills & Management: Strong executive communication, workshop facilitation, stakeholder management, and experience leading consulting teams and workstreams.1 Secondary Good-to-Have Skills Standards & Models: Experience with ISO 20022, canonical payment models, and payment data transformation.1 Payment Rails: Specific knowledge of ACH/EFT, wires, SWIFT, RTP/FedNow, cards, and cross-border payments.1 Governance Tools: Familiarity with enterprise data governance or catalog platforms.1 Innovation: Experience defining AI-enabled payment operations and data-driven payment capabilities.1 Industry Context: Prior experience with major bank transformation or payments modernization programs.1