Mercury

Payment Operations Lead

Mercury$135K — $168K *
Finance & Insurance
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3-5+ years of experience in payments, banking operations, or related fields preferably within fintech or regulated tech companies.
  • Deep knowledge of payment rails including wires, RTP, ACH, and checks.
  • Experience in leading and coaching operational teams with a focus on performance improvement.
  • Strong background in scalability through process enhancement and tools such as automation and dashboards.
  • Familiarity with regulatory environments concerning speed, customer experience, and operational quality.
  • Excellent communication skills in complex or high-pressure situations.
  • Demonstrated ownership in identifying and addressing operational inefficiencies.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the Payment Operations team to set priorities and uphold high standards.
  • Build scalable operations for various payment types including international and domestic wires.
  • Utilize payment expertise to guide the team in resolving operational issues.
  • Enhance operational efficiency through improved processes and automation.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify workflow bottlenecks.
  • Define and monitor key metrics for payment operations effectiveness.
  • Foster a high-performance team culture focused on ownership and quality.

Benefits

  • Equity options or RSUs as part of the compensation package.
  • Competitive salary and equity based on industry standards.
  • Regular updates to compensation based on reliable market data.
Full Job Description
In this role, you'll:
  • Lead and develop a Payment Operations team responsible for supporting Mercury Bank's payment rails, ensuring the team has clear priorities, strong operating standards, and the coaching needed to do excellent work.
  • Build and scale payment operations desks across international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks, including the workflows, escalation paths, controls, documentation, and quality standards needed to support reliable money movement at increasing volume.
  • Bring deep payments expertise to operational decision-making, helping the team navigate exceptions, investigations, returns, rejects, recalls, partner requirements, and the tradeoffs that come with moving money in a regulated environment.
  • Improve operational efficiency through better processes, tooling, automation, AI-enabled workflows, dashboards, and measurement systems that reduce manual effort while preserving judgment and control.
  • Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Banking Partnerships, and other Operations teams to identify bottlenecks, improve workflows, and ensure payment operations are built for scale.
  • Define and track the metrics that matter for payment operations, including productivity, quality, SLA adherence, exception trends, control health, payment rail performance, and customer or partner impact.
  • Create a culture of ownership, urgency, and high quality, where the team understands not just what needs to happen, but why it matters for customers, partners, and Mercury.
You should:
  • Have 3-5+ years of experience in payments, banking operations, payment operations, business operations, or a related operational function, ideally in a financial institution, bank, fintech, or regulated technology company.
  • Bring deep working knowledge of payment rails such as international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks, including money movement operations, payment exceptions, operational risk, controls, and the systems that support reliable payment processing.
  • Have experience leading, coaching, or managing an operations team, with a track record of setting clear expectations, improving performance, and building strong team operating rhythms.
  • Be excited to make operations more scalable through process improvement, tooling, automation, AI, documentation, dashboards, and thoughtful measurement.
  • Understand how to operate in a regulated environment, including how to balance speed, customer experience, risk, compliance, and operational quality.
  • Communicate clearly and calmly, especially when work is complex, cross-functional, urgent, or sensitive.
  • Have a high degree of ownership. You notice where the system is fragile, unclear, or too manual, and you take responsibility for making it better.
  • Be comfortable working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Banking Partnerships, and other teams to turn operational realities into better systems.
Compensation:

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options/RSUs), and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate's experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:
  • US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $135,000 - $168,700 USD
  • US employees outside of New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $121,500 - $151,800 USD

About Mercury

Mercury is a banking and financial services company that provides a range of products and services to individuals and businesses. Their offerings include checking and savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and investment services. The company was founded in 2000 and has since grown to become a leading player in the financial industry. Mercury's mission is to help people and businesses achieve their financial goals, and they are committed to providing excellent customer service and innovative solutions.
Learn more about Mercury
Size
5,000 employees
Industry

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