Payments Product Manager

About the role

We're currently looking for a Payments Product Manager who will take a key role on our United States location-neutral team. You'll serve as CardFlight's payments domain expert.

Responsibilities

• Providing product thought leadership on how all transactional components of our product function, how that maps to processor integrations, our roadmap for end-to-end certification processes, while working alongside the certification team on execution.
• Managing processor integration and certification processes end-to-end, from intake paperwork through testing and delivery, including negotiating scope and requirements with certification analysts at major processors.
• Serving as the primary point of contact with processors and card brands for compliance matters, emerging standards, and production issues, with the communication skills and relationship-building discipline to represent CardFlight effectively in high-stakes technical conversations.
• Reviewing card brand compliance bulletins and emerging payments standards, developing a pragmatic point of view on where the product needs to evolve, surfacing and actioning those recommendations proactively.
• Acting as CardFlight's internal expert on topics like emerging payment methods and standards, EMV kernels, certification intake requirements, and processor integration architecture, helping the broader team build knowledge.
• Managing many concurrent workstreams across multiple active certifications and processor integrations simultaneously without losing attention to detail.
• Reading and interpreting raw specification documents from card brands and processors, and translating them into clear, engineering-ready requirements, user stories, and Product Requirements Documents without requiring them to be pre-interpreted by someone else.
• Identifying compliance obligations from standards bodies like EMVCo and PCI-DSS, card brand rules and processor integration specs, and proactively surfacing requirements before they become production issues.
• Auditing how new user-facing features impact processor integrations and certification requirements, and flagging those dependencies early in the product development process.
• Advocating for payments capabilities such as emerging authentication standards, network tokenization, or new payment methods by building the product case before they become urgent priorities.
• Maintaining and executing against a roadmap that balances active certifications, new processor integrations, compliance obligations, and platform improvements.
• Acting as the bridge between the payments team and the broader product organization, ensuring payments infrastructure priorities are visible, understood, and accounted for in the overall product roadmap.
• Clearly communicating the reasoning behind roadmap decisions to engineering, operations, and partner teams so everyone understands not just what is being built but why.
• Owning launch readiness by coordinating across teams to ensure documentation, certification sign-off, and engineering work are all aligned and complete before anything ships.
• Deeply embedded in the payments team's culture and daily work, serving as a trusted partner to the certification team while bringing a product management lens to their priorities and processes.
• Embedded in the engineering team's daily rhythm, attending standups, refinements, and sprint planning, and reviewing completed work to ensure it meets the intended product outcome before release.
• Working with operations to share product requirements, review documentation, and train the team on how new features or compliance changes work so they can effectively support merchants after launch.

Requirements

At least 3 years (and preferably 5-10+ years) of product management experience in payments. What matters is that you have built deep expertise in payments infrastructure, have overseen integrations into payment processors and experience with their certification processes, and that you are familiar with shipping software that is developed and maintained in-house.

Technical Requirements & Spec Interpretation

• Comfort with the project-management overhead that payments certifications require tracking timelines, managing external partners, and coordinating across teams while keeping the product perspective front and center.
• Deep understanding of processor certification processes (including “Level 3” card present certifications) and hands-on experience managing certifications with major processors and card brands.
• Familiarity with applicable standards like PCI DSS and EMVCo kernel lifecycles.
• Ability to read, interpret, and translate raw processor integration specs and card brand rules into clear engineering requirements without needing them pre-interpreted by someone else.
• Proven experience managing relationships with processors and card brands, with the communication skills and professionalism to represent a smaller organization effectively in high-stakes technical conversations.
• The ability to prioritize effectively across a complex, ever-shifting set of payments obligations, certifications, compliance mandates, processor integrations, and product requests, and communicate those priorities clearly to the teams depending on you.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the organizational discipline to manage multiple deadlines and work with external partners simultaneously.
• A natural collaborator who can bring together engineering, operations, and external partners to move complex technical work forward.
• Comfort working with product analytics tools and the ability to use data to support and defend product decisions.