Job Overview

We are seeking an experienced Payment Escalations Team Lead with a proven track record of managing and mentoring high-performing financial operations teams. In this role, you will lead a dedicated team responsible for investigating complex payment discrepancies, resolving high-priority escalations, and managing payment failure workflows (including trace & recalls and returns). You will balance team leadership and operational excellence, ensuring strict adherence to global financial regulations, SLAs, and accuracy standards.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Management

- Direct Supervision: Lead, mentor, and manage a team of payment investigation analysts, setting clear performance expectations, metrics, and KPIs.
- Workload & Case Allocation: Oversee daily team queue management, ensuring efficient assignment, tracking, and timely resolution of payment escalation workflows.
- Performance & Development: Conduct regular 1-on-1s, performance reviews, and continuous training to upskill the team on emerging payment schemes, dispute resolution, and compliance updates.
- Process Enhancement: Analyze team operational output, identify bottlenecks, and refine escalation protocols to drive team productivity and reduce resolution turnaround time (TAT).

Operational & Technical Oversight
- Escalation Management: Oversee and act as the final internal point of escalation for high-value or complex payment disputes, chargebacks, trace & recalls, incoming/outgoing returns, and payment failure trends.
- Stakeholder Coordination: Interface directly with partner financial institutions, payment gateways, card networks, and internal cross-functional teams (Risk, Compliance,



Customer Support, Engineering) to resolve systemic payment issues.
- Compliance & Governance: Ensure all team operations adhere strictly to global financial regulations (e.g., AML, KYC, PCI-DSS) and internal SLA requirements.
- Reporting & Quality Assurance: Maintain oversight of team documentation accuracy, generating regular operational dashboards and reporting payment failure trends to senior management.

Requirements & Qualifications Experience & Education
- Team Leadership: Minimum 5 years of experience directly managing and leading teams in financial operations, payment escalations, or fraud operations.
- Industry Experience: 6+ years total experience in payment investigations, high-value transaction reconciliations, chargebacks, or banking operations.
- Education: Bachelors degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a related field.

Technical & Functional Skills
- Domain Knowledge: Deep understanding of payment schemes (ACH, Wire, SWIFT, SEPA, Card Networks, Real-Time Payments), trace & recall protocols, and fraud mitigation strategies.
- Tools & Software: Proficiency with payment processing tools, CRM ticketing platforms (e.g., Zendesk, Salesforce, Jira), reconciliation systems, and financial analytics platforms.
- Analytical Capability: Proven experience using data to track failure payment trends, conduct root-cause analysis, and refine operational processes.

Soft Skills
- Solid leadership, decision-making, and conflict-resolution abilities under pressure.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills for managing external banking relationships and executive leadership reporting.

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