Payment Operations Manager

Job description

ABOUT NEON Neon is a global payments and e-commerce platform designed to help game publishers earn more money and independence from app stores. We believe commerce should be open and transparent: clear decisions, actionable insights, and aligned incentives. Founded by payments, fintech and gaming veterans, Neon focuses on product and partnership excellence: we share the playbook, co-pilot decisions, and abstract away risk and complexity for our customers. We’re replacing old-school, black-box relics with clear, modern, and developer-centric infrastructure. As an early team member, you’ll have the opportunity to shape and scale Neon’s product and culture, making a direct impact on our growth and success. You’ll join a collaborative, diverse team from world-class companies like Apple, Affirm, Unity, and Visa, backed by renowned VC's including Thrive, a16z, Griffin Gaming, Ribbit, and Renegade. If you want to build disruptive technology, challenge the status quo, and help game creators thrive on their own terms, read on. Role Overview Neon is a gaming-focused Merchant of Record platform serving game publishers globally. We process payments across 50+ markets through multiple PSPs simultaneously, operating as the seller of record across card networks, local wallets, A2A rails, and alternative payment methods. This role owns the operational backbone of that system: dispute and chargeback management, fraud operations, compliance monitoring, payment performance tracking, and operational support for Customer Success. As the senior operator across these functions, the Payment Operations Manager sets operational standards, defines targets, owns PSP and partner operational relationships, and is accountable for outcomes across payments, risk, fraud, and compliance. The role partners with the Head of Payments and the Risk, Fraud & Compliance Product Leader as a peer across all four functions. This is a senior individual-contributor role. The Manager title reflects the seniority and ownership scope of the role and function, not direct reports at this stage. Scope & Responsibilities Dispute & Chargeback Operations - Own dispute intake, evidence compilation, and resolution across all active payment processors and markets. - Define and own resolution SLAs and win-rate targets; identify systemic patterns and drive fixes with product and risk leads. - Prioritize and drive the roadmap for internal dispute tooling as operational infrastructure matures. Fraud Operations - Own fraud operations and oversee investigations and transaction reviews in partnership with the Risk, Fraud & Compliance Product Leader. - Set monitoring and escalation standards across screening and decisioning tools; maintain case integrity and decision quality. - Track fraud loss trends across markets and game titles; surface and act on emerging attack patterns before they scale. Payment Performance Monitoring - Own tracking of authorization rates, payment success rates, decline codes, and fraud losses across processors and markets. - Own post-launch metric reviews for new payment methods against defined performance thresholds. - Define the operational dashboard and alerting standard; ensure anomalies are caught before they become publisher-impacting incidents. Customer Success Support - Serve as the senior operational point of contact for payment-related requests escalated by Customer Success. - Lead deep dives into publisher payment performance, dispute trends, and fraud exposure, producing structured analysis CS can use directly in publisher conversations. - Own the operational response to payment incidents: root cause investigation, timeline reconstruction, and remediation communication. PSP & Partner Management - Own day-to-day operational relationships with PSPs and payment partners, including performance reviews, escalations, and issue resolution. - Hold partners accountable to performance and SLA commitments; drive improvement where markets or methods underperform. Process, Tooling & Standards - Set and maintain operational standards, runbooks, and process documentation that others follow. - Prioritize automation opportunities and partner with the Head of Payments, Risk & Compliance, and engineering to translate operational gaps into product and tooling improvements. - Act as the senior escalation point for payment operations. Key Success Metrics - Dispute win rate and resolution turnaround, owned and improved per processor. - Fraud operations outcomes: fraud loss rate, false positive rate, detection rate, and escalation accuracy. - PSR performance against target across active payment methods and markets, with defined review triggers on all methods. - Incident response and resolution time for publisher-impacting payment issues. - Reporting accuracy, on-time delivery, and operational process maturity as the function scales. Ideal Profile - 6-8+ years in payments operations, fraud ops, or fintech risk, with a track record of owning a function or leading operational initiatives, ideally at a PSP, Merchant of Record, or digital goods company. - Has run these functions end to end, not just participated in them; comfortable operating across multiple payment processors simultaneously, with direct experience of global PSPs such as Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, or Razorpay. - Experience owning PSP or partner relationships and influencing product, engineering, and Customer Success without formal authority. - Deep understanding of dispute and chargeback mechanics at the card network level (Visa/Mastercard rules), not just tool navigation. - Strong analytical capability: works across dashboards and data tools, builds structured reports, and finds signals in noisy transaction data. - Detail-oriented and self-directing; operates with significant autonomy across a broad and growing operational surface. - Business-level English proficiency required, written and verbal.