Lead Product Manager – Payments Risk

Xero; Hayward Park (CA); On-site; USD 212,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity (RSU)

Medical benefits

Paid holidays

PTO & leave

Job summary

Xero is seeking a Lead Product Manager for Payments Risk in California. You will own the product strategy and execution for merchant and transaction risk, building scalable risk capabilities and decisioning systems.

Partner with Risk, Compliance, Engineering, Data and Operations to balance customer experience with risk management. This role requires deep payments risk expertise and experience working with processors or other risk providers.

Qualifications

• Deep payments risk product experience essential.
• Experience building risk capabilities within a payments platform or fintech.
• Strong analytical skills using fraud, transaction and loss data.

Responsibilities

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for merchant and transaction risk.
• Build risk decisioning capabilities using rules, signals and scoring.
• Design scalable risk platform capabilities across processors, payment methods and markets.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Data Science, Risk, Compliance and Operations.

Skills

Payments risk product experience

Merchant risk

Transaction risk

Fintech product management

Data-driven decisioning

Analytical skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Experience with processors/acquirers

Job description

Lead Product Manager – Payments Risk

Our Purpose

At Xero, we’re here to supercharge small businesses. By making small business more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

How you’ll make an impact

As a Lead Product Manager – Payments Risk, you’ll build the risk capabilities that enable Xero customers to accept payments securely, reliably and with as little unnecessary friction as possible.

You’ll own product strategy and execution across two core areas:

Merchant risk — including KYB/KYC, merchant eligibility, underwriting, risk segmentation, financial exposure management and ongoing merchant monitoring.

Transaction risk — including fraud detection and decisioning, transaction monitoring, disputes and chargebacks, reserves and holds, payout risk and payments loss management.

This is a Product Management role focused on payments risk, not a Risk Operations or Compliance role. You’ll partner closely with Risk, Compliance, Engineering, Data and Operations to turn risk strategy and policy into scalable product capabilities.

What you’ll do

Build Xero’s payments risk capabilities

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for merchant and transaction risk.
• Build capabilities for merchant eligibility, underwriting, risk segmentation, financial exposure management and ongoing monitoring.
• Build transaction fraud detection, monitoring and decisioning capabilities using signals, rules, scoring, velocity and limits.
• Develop controls for disputes, chargebacks, reserves, holds, negative balances and payout risk.
• Build the tooling and workflows needed to support investigation, review and risk operations.

Build risk as a scalable platform capability

• Develop reusable capabilities for risk decisioning, rules, signals, limits, monitoring, alerts and case management.
• Partner with Engineering and Data on APIs, data models, architecture and decisioning systems required to operate risk at scale.
• Design capabilities that can support multiple processors, payment methods and markets.
• Evaluate build-versus-partner decisions and determine where Xero should own risk capabilities versus rely on processors or specialist risk providers.

Make the right risk trade-offs

• Translate risk appetite and policy into product controls and customer experiences.
• Use data to balance fraud and financial loss against merchant friction, transaction conversion and operational cost.
• Establish clear risk metrics and continuously improve decision quality, false-positive rates and loss performance.
• Identify emerging merchant, fraud and loss patterns and evolve controls as risks change.

What you’ll bring with you

Deep, hands‑on payments risk product experience is essential for this role.

We’re looking for someone who has built and operated risk capabilities within a payments platform, PSP, acquirer, PayFac, marketplace or similar payments environment.

You should have meaningful Product Management experience across both:

• Merchant risk: KYB/KYC, merchant onboarding, eligibility, underwriting, merchant risk assessment, financial exposure management and/or ongoing monitoring.
• Transaction risk: fraud detection and decisioning, transaction monitoring, disputes and chargebacks, reserves and holds, payout risk and/or payments loss management.

You’ll also bring:

• Significant Product Management experience in a technically complex payments or fintech environment.
• Strong understanding of how merchant risk, transaction risk and the movement of money create financial exposure.
• Experience building risk decisioning capabilities using rules, signals, scoring, limits and data-driven models.
• Strong analytical skills and experience using fraud, transaction and loss data to make product decisions.
• Experience partnering closely with Engineering, Data Science, Risk, Compliance and Operations.
• Experience working with payment processors, acquirers and/or third‑party risk providers.
• Strong product judgement and the ability to make decisions where customer experience, growth and risk are in tension.

We’re particularly interested in candidates whose experience extends beyond KYC/compliance or consumer identity fraud into broader merchant and transaction risk within a payments environment.

Success looks like

• Legitimate merchants can accept payments with minimal unnecessary friction.
• Higher‑risk merchants and transactions are identified and treated appropriately.
• Fraud, chargebacks and payments losses remain within Xero’s agreed risk appetite.
• Risk capabilities and decisioning can scale across processors, payment methods and markets.

Compensation & Total Rewards

At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We don’t just hire for a role; we invest in people. We believe in a Total Package philosophy - which means your value isn't just a single number on a paycheck. While base salary is a core component, we look at your compensation through a holistic lens that includes equity, performance incentives, and world‑class benefits.

The expected base salary range for this role in:

• California: $212,200 – $265,200 USD

Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role.

In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for the following forms of variable compensation:

• Variable Pay: Permanent employees are eligible to participate in our annual bonus and equity (RSU) programs. You may also be eligible for performance-based cash or equity (RSUs) incentives depending on your role level, and company performance.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) match, and 21 days PTO, 10 days of Wellbeing leave, 5 days of Xtra Leave, 1 volunteer day, 12 paid holidays, paid parental leave. Further information included on our Xero Perks page.

Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job‑related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions. A human recruiter reviews all candidates before any hiring action is taken.