Payments Operations Leader — Scale & Secure

Shift Financial Pty; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Collaborative teams

Roadmap & strategy review every 100 d

Flexible working environment

26 weeks parental leave

Wellbeing facilities

Birthday day off

Job summary

Shift Financial Pty is seeking a Head of Payment Operations to build and scale our payments function in Australia. You will lead initiatives to reduce regulatory, reputational, and fraud risk while guiding the team responsible for Direct Entry and NPP, with expansion into future rails and methods such as card issuing or PayTo.

You will design bank‑quality processes, strengthen monitoring, and govern vendor and infrastructure relationships.

Qualifications

• Experience establishing payment operations capabilities with governance in regulated financial services.
• Expertise in Direct Entry and NPP rails, fraud monitoring, and disputes/chargebacks.
• Strong regulatory fluency and ability to translate requirements into controls.
• Experience managing vendors or MSPs in payments context.
• Proven people leadership building teams from a small base.
• Financial services industry experience.
• Skills in process mapping, customer journey analysis, data‑led decision making.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement bank‑quality payment operations processes across Direct Entry and NPP, with scalability for additional channels.
• Enhance transaction monitoring capability from base rules to mature risk‑based detection.
• Collaborate with Product and Technology to grow fraud monitoring, detection, investigation, and case management.
• Build robust disputes and chargebacks capabilities, managing scheme rules and regulatory obligations.
• Recruit, build, and lead a 24/7 payment operations team.
• Establish and maintain payment operations policies, procedures, and governance.
• Oversee SLAs for vendors and payment infrastructure with Risk, Product, and partners.
• Define a performance framework using KPIs, data, and client insights for accountability.
• Manage incidents for payment processing and fraud, driving root cause analysis.
• Act as the business’ primary engagement point for payment operations across stakeholders.
• Report on performance, risk posture, and incident trends to leadership.

Skills

Payment operations leadership

Direct Entry

NPP

Fraud monitoring

Disputes & chargebacks

Regulatory compliance

Vendor management

Data‑driven analysis

Job description

Shift Financial Pty is seeking a Head of Payment Operations to build and scale our payments function in Australia. You will lead initiatives to reduce regulatory, reputational, and fraud risk while guiding the team responsible for Direct Entry and NPP, with expansion into future rails and methods such as card issuing or PayTo.

You will design bank‑quality processes, strengthen monitoring, and govern vendor and infrastructure relationships.