Director, Payment Operations

Aylo Careers; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work environment

Global teams

Job summary

Aylo Careers is seeking a Director of Payment Operations to define and lead our global payments strategy across processing, acquiring, and orchestration. You will partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, Risk, and Legal to optimize performance, reliability, and economics while supporting growth.

You will manage relationships with acquirers, PSPs, and networks, lead a payments team, and drive improvements in routing, authorization, and compliance in a hybrid, international environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in payments, fintech, e-commerce, or banking.
• 3+ years leading payments teams or setting payments strategy.
• Deep knowledge of card payments ecosystem: acquirers, processors, gateways, PSPs, networks, tokenization, 3DS/SCA, chargebacks, fraud.
• Proven track record negotiating processor terms.
• Strong grasp of payment economics including interchange, fees, and pricing structures.
• Analytical skills to turn transaction data into decisions.
• Experience with authorization improvement, routing, and experimentation.
• Experience collaborating with Product and Engineering teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to balance strategy with hands-on operational issues.

Responsibilities

• Execute the global payments strategy and roadmap across processing, acquiring, routing, and geographic expansion.
• Manage relationships with acquirers, processors, PSPs, and networks, including contracts and SLAs.
• Optimize multi-acquirer setups for redundancy, pricing, and coverage.
• Improve authorization rates by analyzing declines, retries, and tokenization performance.
• Develop routing strategies and run experiments to measure impact.
• Own payment economics and negotiate rates; build financial models for proposals.
• Collaborate with Risk, Fraud and Compliance to balance safety and approval rates.
• Ensure stable operations with incident response, reconciliation, and change-controls.
• Partner with Product/Engineering to define payment capabilities and evaluate gateways.
• Lead and develop the payments team; report to senior leadership; interface with banks and partners.

Skills

Payments leadership

Strategic planning

Negotiation

Analytics

Cross-functional teamwork

SQL knowledge

Operational risk

Stakeholder management

Communication skills

Hands-on problem solving

Tools

SQL

Payment orchestration platforms

Job description

Established in 2004, we are a tech pioneer offering world-class adult entertainment and games on some of the internet’s safest and most popular platforms. With the support of an international team of dynamic and collaborative innovators, we are on a mission to enable safe user experiences and empower our communities by celebrating diversity, inclusion, and expression — all while maintaining robust trust-and-safety protocols.

We embrace the best of both worlds! Local talent can thrive in our collaborative office space with the flexibility of a hybrid work environment, while remote team members play an integral role in shaping our dynamic culture from afar. We have offices in Montreal (Quebec), Austin (Texas) and Nicosia (Cyprus).

*A select number of positions require full-time in office attendance*

The Director of Payment Operations continuously improves and executes the company's global payments strategy. The strategy covers processing, acquiring, payment methods, orchestration, authorization optimization, and day-to-day payment operations. You will own the performance, scalability, reliability, and economics of our payments ecosystem. You will work closely with Product, Engineering, Finance, Risk, Compliance, Legal, and Commercial teams so that payments support both customer experience and business growth.

What you'll be doing

• Execute the global payments strategy and roadmap, including processing, acquiring, payment methods, routing, and geographic expansion
• Manage relationships with acquirers, processors, gateways, PSPs, and card networks, including selection, onboarding, contracts, and SLAs
• Optimize multi-acquirer and multi-processor setups for redundancy, pricing, and global coverage
• Drive higher authorization and approval rates by analyzing declines, retries, cascading, tokenization, and account updater performance
• Develop intelligent routing strategies and run experimentation frameworks to measure the impact of changes
• Own payment economics (interchange, assessments, processor fees, cross-border costs), negotiate rates and terms, and build financial models to evaluate partner proposals
• Partner with Risk, Fraud, and Compliance to balance fraud prevention with approval rates, keep chargebacks within acceptable levels, and meet card-network rules
• Ensure stable, resilient payment operations, with clear processes for incidents, outages, settlement issues, and reconciliation breaks, plus automation and change-management controls
• Partner with Product and Engineering to define and deliver payment capabilities, and evaluate gateways, orchestration platforms, and alternative payment methods
• Lead and develop the payments team, report on performance, risks, and priorities to senior leadership, and represent the company with banks, networks, and strategic partners

What you'll need to be successful:

Must-haves:

• 8+ years of experience in payments, fintech, e-commerce, banking, or a related industry
• 3+ years of senior leadership experience managing payments teams or setting payments strategy
• Deep knowledge of the card payments ecosystem: acquirers, processors, gateways, PSPs, card networks, issuers, orchestration, tokenization, 3DS/SCA, chargebacks, fraud, and alternative payment methods
• Proven track record managing processor relationships and negotiating commercial terms
• Strong grasp of payment economics, including interchange, assessments, fees, reserves, and pricing structures
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to turn transaction-level data into business decisions
• Experience with authorization improvement, routing, and payment experimentation
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product and Engineering teams
• Strong communication, negotiation, and stakeholder-management skills
• Ability to balance strategy with hands-on work on complex operational and technical issues

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience with multi-processor or multi-acquirer environments, payment orchestration, and intelligent routing
• Experience in high-volume subscription, marketplace, e-commerce, or similarly complex payment environments
• Experience operating across multiple countries and currencies
• Knowledge of card-network rules and of regulatory, compliance, and risk requirements
• Proficiency in SQL or similar analytical tools
• Experience negotiating large-scale agreements with acquirers and processors

As an equal opportunity employer, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees

In this role you may be exposed to adult content