Merchant Support Specialist

Polar; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Polar is seeking a Merchant Support Specialist to be on the front lines helping merchants succeed. You’ll troubleshoot, answer questions, and collaborate with Product and Engineering to improve the merchant experience.

As part of a small team, you’ll shape processes, improve tooling, and help define how Merchant Operations scales while maintaining a strong customer experience across channels.

Qualifications

• 2+ years in customer support, merchant support, or customer success, preferably SaaS/fintech/payments.
• Excellent written communication with a customer-first mindset.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving abilities.
• Experience with support platforms such as Zendesk, Intercom, Plain, or similar.
• Ability to manage multiple conversations with attention to detail.
• Comfort collaborating with Product and Engineering to resolve issues.
• Familiarity with payments, subscriptions, or Merchant of Record platforms is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Respond to merchant and customer inquiries across email, chat, and Slack.
• Troubleshoot payments, payouts, subscriptions, checkout, and merchant dashboard issues.
• Investigate bugs and drive resolutions with Product and Engineering.
• Assist merchants with onboarding and using Polar as Merchant of Record.
• Identify recurring support trends and contribute to Help Center and documentation improvements.
• Escalate complex issues to appropriate teams while keeping merchants informed.
• Maintain high standards of customer experience and timely support.
• Contribute to operational improvements to scale support quality.

Skills

Customer support

Communication

Troubleshooting

Support platforms

Cross-functional collaboration

Payments knowledge

Tools

Zendesk

Intercom

Plain

Slack

Job description

Why Polar?

It's never been easier to build, ship and scale software.

But it's never been harder to monetize it.

Modern startups look fundamentally different than prior generations:

• Smaller teams
• Exponential revenue growth relative to headcount
• Higher variability in costs (LLMs) requiring more frequent pricing iterations
• Laser focused on product development and distribution
• Delegating and automating everything that is boilerplate – be it in their codebase or business operations.

Exceptional billing primitives, APIs and SDKs are essential, but delightful integration is not enough.

Startups need a billing platform designed for their speed of iteration. Combining billing and analytics in one platform to offer customer- and feature unit economics in real-time. Offering built-in pricing and cost insights, simulations and optimizations while simultaneously handling international compliance, tax management, fraud prevention and more.

That's Polar. We're building the next standard for applied AI startups.

Join our small, talented and engineering-led team across Europe as we build the infrastructure powering the next generation of software companies.

We focus on shipping at high velocity to serve startup founders scale their businesses. Everything else is secondary.

Role & responsibilities: What you will do

As a Merchant Support Specialist, you'll be on the front lines helping merchants and customers succeed with Polar. You'll troubleshoot issues, answer questions, and work closely with Product and Engineering to improve the merchant experience.

We're a small team, so everyone contributes beyond their core responsibilities. You'll have the opportunity to shape processes, improve tooling, and help define how Merchant Operations scales.

You’ll work with the team to:

• Respond to merchant and customer inquiries across email, chat, and Slack.
• Troubleshoot issues related to payments, payouts, subscriptions, checkout, and the merchant dashboard.
• Investigate bugs, reproduce issues, and work closely with Product and Engineering to drive resolutions.
• Help merchants navigate onboarding and answer questions about using Polar as their Merchant of Record.
• Identify recurring support trends and contribute to improvements in our Help Center, documentation, and internal processes.
• Escalate complex payment, technical, or account issues to the appropriate teams while keeping merchants informed throughout the process.
• Maintain a high bar for customer experience by providing thoughtful, accurate, and timely support.
• Contribute to operational improvements that help us scale support without sacrificing quality.

What we’re looking for

We're looking for someone who enjoys solving problems, communicating with customers, and improving systems. You're comfortable working across multiple tools, can explain complex topics clearly, and care about delivering an excellent customer experience while balancing efficiency with attention to detail.

Skills & Experience

• 2+ years of experience in customer support, merchant support, or customer success, preferably in SaaS, fintech, or payments.
• Excellent written communication skills with a customer-first mindset.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving abilities.
• Experience working with support platforms such as Plain, Zendesk, Intercom, or similar.
• Ability to prioritize multiple conversations while maintaining attention to detail.
• Comfortable collaborating with Product and Engineering teams to resolve customer issues.
• Familiarity with payments, subscriptions, or Merchant of Record platforms is a plus.

90-day Plan & Milestones

First 30 Days - Learning

• Learn Polar's products, merchant onboarding flow, and Merchant of Record model.
• Become familiar with support workflows, documentation, and internal tools.
• Shadow merchant and customer conversations across email, chat, and Slack.
• Begin handling straightforward support inquiries with guidance.

First 60 Days - Implementing

• Independently manage merchant and customer support tickets.
• Troubleshoot payment, payout, checkout, and subscription issues.
• Investigate bugs and collaborate with Product and Engineering on escalations.
• Start contributing to improvements in documentation and support processes.

First 90 Days - Contributing

• Take ownership of merchant and customer issues from first response through resolution, coordinating across teams when needed.
• Handle more complex merchant issues and coordinate cross-functional resolutions.
• Identify recurring support trends and recommend operational improvements.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to improve the merchant experience.