Lead, Payment Operations Strategy & Automation

We're hiring someone to lead the operational side of how Wise handles payments that don't complete cleanly and to help redesign that operation for a world where AI agents do most of the work. Why this role exists Wise moves money across borders for millions of customers globally. Most payments go through cleanly. Some don't — they get delayed, returned, misrouted, or need a human to step in. Those payments are handled by the Payment Operations function. Wise is on a long-term growth trajectory, and operational handling needs to scale in a way that doesn't just track volume linearly. So we've made a deliberate bet: over the next three years, we're rebuilding Payment Operations into a hybrid human + AI operating model — where AI agents execute the majority of frontline work, and humans move from handlers to designers, monitors, and escalators of agent-driven systems.

That's the shift you'd lead.

The role

You'd own Central Payment Operations at the function level: a team of Product Specialists and Technical Leads embedded alongside our Payment Defects & Incidents product-engineering squad. Together, you and the product-engineering squad share one roadmap, one vision, and one mission. Concretely, you'd:

• Own the outcome. Move our core operational metrics — cost, first-resolution rate, defect rate, operational loss — at scale.
• Co-shape the roadmap with the Product Manager and Engineering Lead. You're the operations voice in every strategy conversation, and the technical/product voice back into operations.
• Design the AI transition. Ship AI-assisted workflows in production. Define and build the evaluation and observability foundations. Prove the design patterns that scale.
• Build the leadership bench. Grow the senior individual contributors and Technical Leads reporting to you into future leaders.
• Represent the function in Risk, Compliance, Analytics, Workforce Management, Quality, Training, Internal Audit, and PayOps leadership forums.

This role reports to the Head of Central Payment Operations. What the first 6 months look like

• Month 1–2: Land. Meet the team, product-engineering partners, and cross-functional stakeholders. Understand the current operational landscape and the shape of the biggest cost drivers.
• Month 2–4: Co-shape the next roadmap cycle. Ship the first AI-assisted workflow in production. Stand up the eval framework.
• Month 4–6: Deliver measurable improvement against the operating-model targets. Establish the operating rhythm for how the team and its product-engineering partners work together.

What we can offer

• A real mandate. This isn't a role where you inherit a system and maintain it. You'll shape how Wise handles payment operations at scale for the next chapter of the company.
• A team that already partners deeply with product and engineering. You don't have to build that from scratch.
• A leader who's done the job. You get a manager who understands the terrain, not someone who'll ask you to explain it.
• Real career pathways. PayOps leadership, business operations across servicing, product/analytics, or leading agentic-ops functions.