Lead PayOps

Who you are

• 5+ years of experience in payments operations, financial operations, treasury operations or operational risk in a regulated or high-volume environment
• Strong exposure to payment operations across at least part of the scope: SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, cash management or related payment rails
• Proven experience managing operational incidents, including triage, escalation, root cause analysis and prevention
• Experience designing scalable operational processes, SLAs, runbooks and controls
• Experience working with Product and Tech teams on tooling, workflow improvements or automation
• Experience managing or coordinating operational teams, ideally in a player/coach setup
• Experience managing external operational stakeholders such as banks, PSPs, payment processors or other financial partners
• Bonus: experience in a regulated fintech, payment institution, EMI, bank, BaaS / embedded finance provider, or with a payment-institution licence setup
• Strong understanding of payment flows, operational failure modes, exceptions and controls
• Good knowledge of first-line-of-defense expectations: operational risk ownership, reconciliations, auditability, exception handling and incident management
• Strong process mindset: able to structure workflows, clarify ownership and improve quality at scale
• Data-driven approach: comfortable defining KPIs, building operational reporting and using metrics to prioritize improvements
• Ability to translate operational pain points into clear Product / Tech requirements
• Good judgment in balancing reliability, customer experience, operational efficiency and risk control
• Ability to design pragmatic automation and tooling improvements without losing operational control
• Rigorous, structured and accountable
• Strong ownership mindset and ability to prioritize in an ambiguous, fast-scaling environment
• Player/coach leadership: comfortable being hands-on while building a team and operating cadence
• Excellent communication under pressure, especially during incidents or partner escalations
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk, Customer Support and external partners
• Customer-conscious: attentive to payment reliability, resolution time and customer impact
• Pragmatic and solution-oriented, able to operate under regulatory constraints without creating unnecessary friction
• Strong pedagogy: able to explain operational constraints and trade-offs in simple, actionable terms
• Fluent French and English are mandatory
• We know that some people are less likely to apply than others, if they don’t feel like they meet the full list of criteria
• If you’re hesitating, we encourage you to apply : who knows, it might be the start of a meaningful and long-lasting collaboration

What the job involves

• Pennylane operates today tens of thousands of business accounts through a BaaS model
• As Financial Services becomes a larger part of Pennylane’s strategy, we are building Pennylane Financial Services and applying for Établissement de paiement and Société de financement licences
• Our ambition is to start onboarding new customers under our own licensed entity by early 2027, before progressively migrating existing customers
• To make this possible, we are building the operational foundations of a regulated financial entity across onboarding, transaction monitoring, fraud, risk and payment operations
• As Lead Payment Operations, you will be one of the first operational leaders joining this greenfield setup
• Reporting to the General Manager / Head of Operations of Pennylane Financial Services, you will own the operational execution of payment operations across SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, and cash / collateral management
• Your mission will be to build, structure and scale the payment operations setup needed to support growing volumes, ensure reliable execution, manage incidents, and protect customer experience while embedding the controls expected from a strong first line of defense
• This is a high-autonomy role with direct exposure to a strategic regulatory project, close collaboration with Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk and external payment partners, and the opportunity to shape the payment operating model of a fast-growing fintech serving hundreds of thousands of French SMEs
• Payment operations & execution:
• Own the end-to-end operational execution of payment operations across:
• SEPA transfers and direct debits,
• Cards,
• International transfers,
• Cheques,
• Cash and collateral management
• Ensure day-to-day reliability of payment operations, including exception handling, operational follow-up, issue resolution, external requests
• Act as the operational point of escalation for payment incidents: triage, coordination, customer impact assessment, mitigation, root cause analysis and durable corrective actions
• Maintain strong auditability of operational decisions, reconciliations, exceptions and incidents
• Operating model, controls & scalability:
• Build and continuously improve the payment operations operating model:
• Processes,
• SLAs,
• Runbooks,
• Documentation,
• Knowledge base,
• Onboarding and training materials
• Define clear ownership, escalation paths and rituals for payment operations
• Design and embed first-line controls aligned with operational risk, regulatory expectations and customer protection
• Implement reconciliation, exception-management and incident-management practices proportionate to the risks of each payment rail
• Prepare the function to scale from an initial team of 3 people to around 10 people while maintaining quality, resilience and operational discipline
• Performance management & continuous improvement:
• Define, monitor and report on payment operations KPIs, including:
• Volumes,
• Success rates,
• Exception and error rates,
• Incident frequency and MTTR,
• Backlog,
• SLA adherence,
• Customer-impact metrics
• Use operational data to identify bottlenecks, recurring issues and high-leverage improvement opportunities
• Drive continuous improvement cycles to reduce manual work, shorten resolution times and improve reliability
• Build the reporting cadence needed to keep internal stakeholders aligned on performance, risks and priorities
• Tooling, automation & Product collaboration:
• Partner closely with Product and Tech teams to shape payment back-office tooling and operational workflows
• Translate operational pain points into clear product requirements, acceptance criteria and post-launch monitoring needs
• Contribute to operational testing before go-live, beyond technical QA: runbooks, edge cases, incident scenarios, reconciliation and handover processes
• Identify and prioritize automation opportunities that improve efficiency, quality and customer experience
• Balance automation and manual controls pragmatically during the first scaling phase
• Incident management & customer protection:
• Build a structured incident-management framework for payment operations:
• Severity levels,
• Ownership,
• Communication rhythm,
• Escalation paths,
• Root cause analysis,
• Prevention actions
• Coordinate with Customer Support, Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk and external partners during operational incidents
• Ensure customer-facing issues such as blocked payments, missing transactions, failed transfers or delayed resolutions are handled with urgency and clarity
• Use post-mortems and operational learnings to prevent recurrence and improve customer transparency
• External stakeholder management:
• Build and maintain strong operational relationships with payment processing providers, partner banks and other external stakeholders
• Define escalation routines and performance expectations with external partners
• Keep providers accountable using facts, metrics and structured follow-up
• Ensure third-party dependencies are well understood, monitored and integrated into Pennylane Financial Services’ operating model
• Team build-up & leadership:
• Recruit, onboard, train and manage the payment operations team
• Operate as a player/coach: remain hands-on on critical topics while progressively building team capacity and autonomy
• Define roles, responsibilities, workload distribution and coverage model
• Build a team culture based on ownership, rigor, customer protection, operational excellence and continuous learning
• Develop the team’s skills across payment operations, incident management, controls and stakeholder management
• First 6–12 months priorities:
• Map current and target payment operations processes across payment rails and identify operational gaps
• Define the target operating model, including rituals, SLAs, controls, escalation paths and reporting
• Build the first version of payment operations runbooks, incident procedures and reconciliation framework
• Set up operational KPIs and reporting routines
• Contribute to the design, testing and launch readiness of payment back-office tooling
• Recruit and onboard the first team members while maintaining hands-on ownership of critical operations
• Build escalation routines with banks, payment processors and internal stakeholders
• Improve customer experience by reducing resolution time, increasing transparency and eliminating recurring operational pain points

Benefits

• Work remotely from anywhere in Europe, as long as your contract allows you to
• Company shares to enjoy a piece of the success story you're building with us
• A budget to turn your home into a more comfortable workspace, as well as a monthly allowance to work from a coworking space whenever you feel like it
• Access to 8000 fitness spaces in Europe and more than 300 activities related to wellness through our partner Gymlib
• Access to Busuu to perfect your english or your french
• The latest Apple equipment
• Be part of a vibrant social community: we do lots of sports together (running, climbing...), we love to hang out and have a drink together (Thursday afterwork drinks on our rooftop is a usual thing)
• Twice-a-year company seminars
• Wonderful office in the center of Paris
• 10 additional days off (to the 25 standard ones) for those based in France
• Lunch credits (Swile card) to buy your favorite food every day, for those based in France
• Great healthcare cover (Alan Blue) to take care of yourself and your family, for those based in France