Payments Operations Lead — Scale Money Movement with AI

Mercury; Portland (OR); On-site; USD 121,500 - 151,800; Full time

Job summary

Mercury is building a complete finance stack for startups. We’re seeking a Payment Operations Lead to build and scale the operational desks that support Mercury Bank’s payment rails, including international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks.

You’ll lead a team, define priorities, institute strong operating standards, and design processes, tooling, and dashboards to improve efficiency without sacrificing judgment or control. This role reports to senior leadership.

Qualifications

• 3-5+ years of experience in payments or banking operations.
• Deep knowledge of payment rails (international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, checks).
• Experience leading an operations team with measurable performance.
• Interest in scalable operations via tooling, automation, AI, and dashboards.
• Ability to operate in a regulated environment with risk controls.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a Payment Operations team responsible for supporting Mercury Bank’s payment rails, ensuring clear priorities and strong operating standards.
• Build and scale payment operations desks across international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks, with workflows, controls, and quality standards.
• Guide decision-making on exceptions, investigations, returns, recalls, and partner requirements in a regulated environment.
• Improve operating efficiency with better processes, tooling, automation, AI-enabled workflows, dashboards, and measurement systems.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Banking Partnerships, and other teams to remove bottlenecks and scale workflows.
• Define and track metrics for productivity, quality, SLA adherence, exception trends, and rail performance.
• Foster a culture of ownership, urgency, and high quality to maintain reliability as Mercury scales.

Skills

Payments knowledge

Team leadership

Process design

Automation

Cross-functional collaboration

AI tooling

Job description

Mercury is building a complete finance stack for startups. We’re seeking a Payment Operations Lead to build and scale the operational desks that support Mercury Bank’s payment rails, including international wires, domestic wires, RTP, ACH, and checks.

You’ll lead a team, define priorities, institute strong operating standards, and design processes, tooling, and dashboards to improve efficiency without sacrificing judgment or control. This role reports to senior leadership.