Sr Lead Product Manager, Risk Decisioning

PayPal; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 179,000 - 292,000; Full time

Job summary

PayPal in the United States seeks a Senior Lead Product Manager to direct risk-domain product strategy across multiple strategies. You will partner with risk leaders to set a multi-year vision, move strategies off legacy systems, and launch new approaches using experimentation and automation.

You will mentor PMs and communicate with executives. You will lead cross-functional pods, drive data-driven decisions, and balance risk with customer experience while advancing PayPal’s risk platform

Qualifications

• 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree OR any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Responsibilities

• Drives product strategy with cross-functional stakeholders consistent with the product vision.
• Plans architectural roadmap balancing design, tech, regulatory needs, time-to-market, and profitability.
• Assesses customer experience and needs in requirements and decision making.
• Sets data gathering mechanisms for usability, research, and market analysis.
• Leads analytics, customer discovery, market research, and competitive analysis to inform decisions.
• Oversees product profitability measures, including budget and reviews.
• Interfaces with leadership and mentors other PMs to drive execution.

Skills

Risk domain expertise

Executive presence

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy.

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade.

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary

At PayPal, real-time decisioning powers customer protection and global commerce. We’re looking for a Senior Lead Product Manager to lead product direction for a risk domain across a portfolio of strategies spanning multiple strategy leaders. Partnering with risk strategy leaders, you’ll set the domain’s vision and multi-year strategy, deciding where to invest and turning outcomes like loss reduction, approval rates, and customer experience into product plans. You’ll be a leading voice in shaping our next-generation Risk Decisioning Platform. Near term, you’ll move strategies off legacy systems and ramp them to full production; beyond that, you’ll launch new strategies and use experimentation and automation to keep optimizing. You’ll lead cross-functional pods, track captured savings with business partners, represent the domain to executives, and mentor other PMs. You bring deep risk domain expertise, technical fluency, and executive presence.

Job Description

Essential Responsibilities

• Drives product strategy with cross-functional stakeholders consistent with the shared vision for the product or enabling platform.
• Plans and implements the architectural roadmap that balances innovative design and technical implementation, while balancing regulatory requirements, time-to-market, meeting customer needs and product profitability.
• Assess the customer experience and customer needs in product requirements and decision making.
• Sets up data gathering mechanisms relative to the metrics that inform the success of products including usability studies, research and market analysis.
• Leads workstreams to include analytics, customer discovery, market research and competitive analysis to drive data-driven decision-making.
• Oversees product profitability measures, including budget.
• Plans operational mechanisms that drive execution and accountability including Product Reviews, Operating Reviews, and Business Reviews. Interfaces with product and technology leadership as needed.
• Partners with content strategists, data scientists, product designers and user experience researchers.
• Maximizes efficiency in a constantly evolving environment where the process is fluid and creative solutions are the standard.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications

• Significant experience building products in fraud, account integrity, credit, or other risk domains, in close partnership with risk strategy leaders.
• Track record of setting a multi-year product vision and strategy for a business domain, balancing near-term delivery with longer-term bets.
• Experience leading product for a multi-team risk portfolio alongside business owners, and reporting outcomes to executive stakeholders.
• Deep knowledge of how risk decisions are made and tuned, including rules, ML models, features, and step-up and friction treatments, and the tradeoff between loss and customer experience.
• Strong quantitative skills: defining and interpreting risk metrics (loss, catch, false positive, and approval rates), prioritizing opportunities across a portfolio, and connecting product changes to business impact.
• Experience launching through controlled rollouts and experimentation, including champion/challenger tests and staged traffic ramps.
• Experience shaping platform roadmaps from the business side, turning domain needs into clear priorities for data science, modeling, and platform teams, and resolving competing demands.
• Experience leading major platform transitions, such as migrating risk strategies off legacy systems, while protecting performance.
• Experience mentoring product managers and establishing repeatable product practices.
• Ability to influence executive stakeholders and drive milestone-based delivery across many teams.

Subsidiary

PayPal

Travel Percent

10

Primary Location : Pay Range

San Jose, California: ($196,500.00 - $291,500.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) : Pay Range

Chicago, Illinois: ($178,500.00 - $265,100.00 Annually)

Austin, Texas: ($178,500.00 - $265,100.00 Annually)

Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most.We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at [e-mail].

Belonging at PayPal

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates.