FinOps Lead

Ryft; Manchester; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Ryft, a regulated payment facilitator, seeks a hands-on Financial Operations Lead in Manchester to own reconciliations, safeguarding and settlements. You’ll run daily processes, then automate them to scale as we enter new markets and currencies.

You’ll liaise with Finance, Compliance, Engineering and banking partners to ensure accurate payment data for month‑end close, manage fees and chargebacks, and expand the operation for new flows and EU licences.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in financial operations, payment operations, treasury or reconciliations at a payments company, EMI, acquirer or fintech.
• Hands-on experience with daily reconciliations at volume with attention to detail and root-cause analysis.
• Working knowledge of UK safeguarding rules (PSRs 2017, EMRs 2011, CASS 15) and what auditors expect to see.
• You understand how card payments settle: schemes, acquirers, interchange and settlement cycles.

Responsibilities

• Reconciliations: run daily reconciliations across scheme and acquirer settlement reports, bank statements and our internal ledger; investigate and resolve breaks quickly and accurately.
• Safeguarding: own the daily internal and external safeguarding reconciliations under CASS 15; prepare the monthly safeguarding return; support the annual safeguarding audit.
• Settlement and payouts: ensure merchants are paid the right amount on time across currencies; manage split payments and escrow balances.
• Fees and cost of payments: reconcile interchange, scheme and acquirer fees against billed amounts; flag margin leakage.
• Disputes and chargebacks: track the financial side of chargebacks, refunds and reserves.
• Month-end: feed accurate payment data into the close; work with Finance on revenue and balance sheet reconciliations.
• Automation: partner with Engineering and Product to replace spreadsheets with automated reconciliations, alerts and dashboards.
• Controls and documentation: write and maintain SOPs, controls and evidence for auditors and FCA.

Skills

Financial operations

Reconciliations

UK safeguarding rules (CASS 15)

Cross-functional liaison

Job description

About Ryft

Ryft is a regulated payment facilitator and authorised payment institution building the infrastructure layer for modern commerce platforms.

About Ryft

Ryft is a regulated payment facilitator and authorised payment institution building the infrastructure layer for modern commerce platforms.

We enable marketplaces, SaaS platforms and multi‑party ecosystems to embed and monetise payments natively. Our technology handles onboarding, compliance, orchestration, split payments and revenue sharing, allowing our partners to focus on growth while we manage complexity.

We are now entering the next phase of scale, expanding into new verticals and building a category-defining embedded payments platform.

The role

Every payment that goes through Ryft creates a trail of money moving between card schemes, acquiring banks, our accounts and our merchants. You make sure that trail adds up, every day, and that customer funds are protected exactly as the FCA requires.

You’ll own Ryft’s financial operations end to end: reconciliations, settlement, safeguarding and the reporting that proves it. It’s a hands‑on role. You’ll run the daily processes yourself, then automate them, so they scale as we launch in new markets and currencies.

What you’ll do

• Reconciliations: run daily reconciliations across scheme and acquirer settlement reports, bank statements and our internal ledger. Investigate and resolve breaks quickly and accurately.
• Safeguarding: own the daily internal and external safeguarding reconciliations under CASS 15, prepare the monthly safeguarding return, keep the resolution pack current and support the annual safeguarding audit.
• Settlement and payouts: make sure merchants are paid the right amount on time, across currencies, and that split payments and escrow balances tie out.
• Fees and cost of payments: reconcile interchange, scheme and acquirer fees against what we've billed, and flag where margin is leaking.
• Disputes and chargebacks: track the financial side of chargebacks, refunds and reserves.
• Month‑end: feed accurate payment data into the close and work with Finance on revenue and balance sheet reconciliations.
• Automation: work with Engineering and Product to replace spreadsheets with automated recs, alerts and dashboards.
• Controls and documentation: write and maintain the SOPs, controls and evidence that auditors and the FCA will ask for.,
• Expansion: help design the finance operations for new payment flows, entities and licences, starting with our EU licence application in Malta.

What we’re looking for

• 4+ years in financial operations, payment operations, treasury or reconciliations at a payments company, EMI, acquirer or fintech.
• Hands‑on experience of daily reconciliations at volume with the highest level of attention to detail. You know how to investigate and resolve the root cause of a break, not just clear it.
• Working knowledge of UK safeguarding rules (PSRs 2017, EMRs 2011, CASS 15) and what an auditor expects to see.
• You understand how card payments settle: schemes, acquirers, interchange and settlement cycles.
• You’d rather build a process once than do it manually forever.
• Comfortable taking full ownership of the end‑to‑end process, and liaising directly with Finance, Compliance, Engineering and our banking partners.

Nice to have

• Experience in a marketplace or platform payments business (split payments, escrow, payouts).
• Multi‑currency and FX settlement experience.
• You’ve been through a safeguarding audit or a CASS 15 implementation.
• Experience with reconciliation or safeguarding tools, or scripting (Python) to automate recs.
• Exposure to setting up operations for a new entity or EU licence.