Position Summary

As the Senior Operations Escalations - Special Projects lead, you will manage high-impact operational escalations while also taking ownership of select special projects and processes requiring elevated oversight, stabilization, or redesign.

You will lead complex escalations from intake through resolution, coordinate cross-functional owners, maintain clear stakeholder communication, and ensure issues do not stall between teams. In addition, you may be assigned temporary end-to-end ownership of sensitive, high-risk, or underperforming operational processes that require special handling.

For these assignments, you will not only manage the immediate work. You will evaluate how the process operates in practice, identify breakdowns and control gaps, establish a more reliable future-state workflow, document roles and procedures, and prepare the appropriate operational team to assume ongoing ownership.

This role is designed for someone who can bring structure to ambiguity, stabilize urgent situations, uncover the root causes behind repeated failures, and turn short-term intervention into a sustainable operating process.

Key Responsibilities

Escalation Leadership

• Maintain a structured escalation action log with owners, timestamps, next checkpoints, risks, and estimated completion dates, ensuring every escalation follows a clear contain, stabilize, and close path.
• Drive containment and stabilization by coordinating response teams across Support, Engineering/Technology, Product, Risk, Finance, and external partners.
• Enforce response cadence, timeboxes, and service expectations across functions; escalate internally when milestones slip, handoffs break down, or decisions stall.
• Drive short-term workarounds to reduce impact while longer-term fixes are being developed, and keep stakeholders aligned on remaining risk until the issue is fully resolved.
• Assess and communicate revenue-at-risk and retention exposure early, especially for Enterprise and strategic accounts.
• Draft and deliver clear, executive-ready updates covering impact, current state, next steps, timing, risks, and decisions or support needed.
• Partner with Relationship Management, Partner Support, Merchant Support, and other customer-facing teams on retention-sensitive escalations to align messaging, commitments, and follow-through.
• Lead lightweight post-incident reviews for escalations that did not go well, document process, communication, or technical breakdowns, and drive prevention actions to completion.

Special Projects & Process Stabilization

• Assume temporary end-to-end ownership of operational processes or workstreams requiring special handling, elevated oversight, or rapid stabilization.
• Evaluate current-state workflows to identify ownership gaps, breakdowns, control weaknesses, delays, and opportunities for simplification or automation.
• Implement interim procedures and controls to reduce immediate customer, partner, revenue, compliance, or retention risk.
• Design and test improved future-state processes with clear ownership, handoffs, escalation paths, service expectations, controls, and success measures.
• Create supporting documentation and execute a structured transition, including training and knowledge transfer, so the appropriate operational team can assume ongoing ownership.
• Present findings, recommendations, risks, progress, and measurable outcomes to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders, and monitor post-implementation effectiveness.

Requirements

Required Skills & Experience Required Experience managing high-stakes operational escalations, service recovery, and cross-functional improvement initiatives in payments, fintech, SaaS, or a comparable environment. Strong project and workflow management skills, including case tracking, process assessment, risk management, documentation, implementation planning, and transition support. Excellent communication, organization, and influencing skills, with the ability to drive accountability, produce executive-ready updates, and operate effectively in ambiguity and urgency. Preferred Experience supporting Enterprise, strategic, or retention-sensitive customers and partners. Payments ecosystem fluency, including processors, gateways, devices, ISVs, tokenization, funding, settlement, risk/chargebacks, billing, and reporting tools. Familiarity with Fortis systems, partners, support workflows, gateway/device support, and internal escalation paths. Role Scope This role is expected to move fluidly between urgent hands-on execution and longer-term process improvement. Special-project assignments are temporary by design: the objective is to stabilize the work, establish a reliable and documented operating model, and transition ongoing ownership to the appropriate team rather than create permanent dependency on the Ops Escalations function.