Payments Lead

Kalshi; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Kalshi is seeking a Payments Lead to own the full lifecycle of payments—from strategy to hands-on execution. You’ll manage deposits, withdrawals, PSP integrations, and provider relationships to ensure payments are reliable, fast, and delightful for users across our growing platform.

You’ll sit at the intersection of product, operations, engineering, compliance, and growth, building dashboards, tracking KPIs like authorization rates and latency, and steering compliance with KYC/AML and

Qualifications

• 5+ years in payments, fintech, or product operations.
• Strong understanding of PSPs, acquirers, processors, and settlement processes.
• Experience leading cross-functional projects with engineering, compliance, and growth.
• Proven negotiation and vendor management skills with PSPs and banks.
• Analytical and technical proficiency to model economics and analyze data.
• Bias toward action with ability to switch between strategy and hands-on work.
• Excellent communication and project management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the payments roadmap: prioritize and drive initiatives that improve payment success, speed, and user experience in coordination with Engineering and Growth and other parts of the organization.
• Manage PSPs and financial partners: negotiate terms, oversee performance, and troubleshoot operational issues with processors, banks, and other partners.
• Optimize conversion and payouts: continuously improve the deposit and withdrawal experience, authorization rates, and settlement times through data‑driven experimentation.
• Monitor and analyze payment health: build dashboards, track KPIs (authorization rates, declines, chargebacks, latency), and identify root causes.
• Ensure compliance and regulatory alignment: Partner with Legal/Compliance to handle KYC, AML, and CFTC‑related obligations in the payments flow.
• Manage fraud prevention and response: manage fraud tools and policies, ensuring a balance between risk control and user experience. Monitor fraud and compliance health.
• Be hands‑on: dive into payment ops workflows, test new integrations, reconcile issues, and own execution when needed.

Skills

Payments leadership

Cross-functional leadership

Payments ecosystem

Vendor management

Data analysis

Operational excellence

Job description

Kalshi is defining a new category

Kalshi has defined a new category: prediction markets. Kalshi allows people to trade on the outcome of any events and turn any question about the future into a financial asset. Kalshi fought for years and legalized prediction markets in the US for the first time in history. Kalshi is currently the fastest growing financial market in America, and has thousands of markets across politics, economics, financials, weather, tech, AI, culture and more.

We believe prediction markets have the potential to be the largest financial market because they turn anything into a financial position.

• Our vision: well… build the largest financial market on the planet.
• Our mission: bring more truth to the world through the power of markets.

Building a new category is hard… like really hard. But it’sbeautiful and deeply fulfilling. Our culture is simple: we hire really talented people, work really hard, and enjoy the climb. We are looking for ambitious and exceptional people to join our (relatively small) team to help us build the next generation of financial markets.

About the Role

As Payments Lead, you’ll own the full lifecycle of payments at Kalshi — from strategy to hands‑on execution. You’ll manage and coordinate the roadmap for deposits, withdrawals, and PSP integrations, while also directly managing providers, resolving issues, and monitoring day‑to‑day performance. You’ll sit at the intersection of product, operations, engineering, compliance, and growth, ensuring that payments are reliable, fast, and delightful.

What You’ll Do

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the payments roadmap: prioritize and drive initiatives that improve payment success, speed, and user experience in coordination with Engineering and Growth and other parts of the organization.

• Manage PSPs and financial partners: negotiate terms, oversee performance, and troubleshoot operational issues with processors, banks, and other partners.

• Optimize conversion and payouts: continuously improve the deposit and withdrawal experience, authorization rates, and settlement times through data‑driven experimentation.

• Monitor and analyze payment health: build dashboards, track KPIs (authorization rates, declines, chargebacks, latency), and identify root causes.

• Ensure compliance and regulatory alignment: Partner with Legal/Compliance to handle KYC, AML, and CFTC‑related obligations in the payments flow.

• Manage fraud prevention and response: manage fraud tools and policies, ensuring a balance between risk control and user experience. Monitor fraud and compliance health.

• Be hands‑on: dive into payment ops workflows, test new integrations, reconcile issues, and own execution when needed.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or product operations.

• Strong understanding of the payments ecosystem: PSPs, acquirers, processors, payment methods, fraud tools, and settlement processes.

• Experience leading cross‑functional projects involving engineering, compliance, and growth.

• Proven negotiation and vendor management skills with PSPs and banks.

• Analytical and technical proficiency: able to model economics, analyze funnel data, and interpret API documentation.

• Bias toward action: comfortable switching between strategic planning and hands‑on execution.

• Excellent communication and project management skills.

Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Kalshi is committed to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe it is our collective responsibility to uphold these values and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to join us in our mission. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, uniform service, veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law. If you are passionate about what you do and want to use your talents to support our mission and values, we’d love to hear from you.