Senior Product Manager - Payments

Job description

SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER – PAYMENTS OUR PURPOSE At Xero, we’re here to supercharge small businesses. By making small business more efficient every day, connecting them with powerful technology and empowering the community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small businesses—we’re building a stronger economy that can change the world. HOW YOU’LL MAKE AN IMPACT As a Senior Product Manager in Xero’s Payments team, you will help build the products and platform that enable millions of small businesses to get paid and move money securely, reliably and effortlessly. You will own complex payment capabilities from end to end—spanning both the customer-facing experience and the underlying payments platform. This includes experiences such as merchant onboarding, payment acceptance, transaction visibility, funds availability, refunds and reconciliation, as well as the platform capabilities that support payment processing, pay-ins, payouts, settlement, orchestration and integration with payment processors and financial networks. Your mission will be to help Xero deliver a modern, resilient and processor-agnostic payments experience that meets customer needs while improving transaction performance, reliability, time to money and commercial outcomes. This role requires a payments generalist who has directly built both: - Customer-facing payment products for merchants, payers or consumers. - Back-end payment capabilities supporting the end-to-end movement and processing of money. You will manage products across the full lifecycle—from customer discovery and product strategy through technical definition, launch, operation and continuous improvement. You will work closely with Engineering, Design, Risk, Compliance, Operations, Finance, Partnerships and Go-to-Market teams to solve complex customer and platform problems. Your impact will be measured through customer, operational and commercial outcomes, including payment adoption, transaction success, time to money, reliability, customer satisfaction and payments revenue. WHAT YOU’LL DO LEAD END-TO-END PAYMENTS PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - Develop the vision, strategy and roadmap for customer-facing payment products and the platform capabilities required to support them. - Own products across the complete payment journey, from merchant onboarding and payment acceptance through authorization, processing, funds availability, settlement, payouts, refunds, disputes and reconciliation. - Ensure that customer experiences and underlying platform capabilities are designed together as one cohesive product. - Identify valuable and differentiated customer problems and frame clear solutions that can be tested, validated and delivered incrementally. - Manage products from early-stage research and ideation through launch, scaling, ongoing operation and eventual retirement. BUILD CUSTOMER-FACING PAYMENT EXPERIENCES - Develop simple, trusted and intuitive experiences that help small businesses accept payments, understand transaction status, access their funds and reconcile payments with their accounting records. - Lead customer research to understand the needs of merchants, payers and operational users. - Use customer data, qualitative insights and market intelligence to inform product strategy, prioritization and roadmap decisions. - Partner closely with Design and Engineering to create high-quality experiences across web, mobile and embedded payment surfaces. - Ensure that complex payment processes and exceptions are translated into clear and understandable customer experiences. DEVELOP SCALABLE PAYMENTS PLATFORM CAPABILITIES - Partner with Engineering on the architecture and evolution of Xero’s payments platform. - Define product requirements for payment processing, pay-ins, payouts, transaction routing, settlement, reconciliation, ledgering and funds movement. - Help evolve the platform toward a processor-agnostic model that supports flexibility across payment service providers, acquiring banks, payment methods and financial networks. - Evaluate the trade-offs between building capabilities internally, using embedded components and integrating third-party providers. - Ensure that new capabilities are designed for scale, reliability, extensibility and expansion across markets. - Support the integration of new payment processors, payment methods, rails and network capabilities. IMPROVE PAYMENT PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY - Drive improvements in transaction success rates, authorization performance, payment completion, funds availability and time to money. - Define and monitor the operational health of the products and payment flows you own. - Identify failure points across the end-to-end transaction lifecycle and lead cross-functional efforts to resolve them. - Partner with Engineering and payment providers to improve availability, resiliency, observability and exception handling. - Use data to understand payment performance by market, processor, payment method, customer segment and transaction type. NAVIGATE RISK, COMPLIANCE AND OPERATIONAL COMPLEXITY - Partner with Risk, Compliance, Legal and Operations to build payment products that meet regulatory, security and operational requirements. - Take responsibility for risks arising from security, privacy, financial crime, regulatory change, data accuracy, responsible data use and service availability. - Lead product trade-off decisions that balance customer experience, risk exposure, regulatory obligations, technical complexity and commercial outcomes. - Ensure that operational processes, support tooling and exception-management capabilities are considered as part of the product—not as an afterthought. - Design customer and internal experiences that support refunds, disputes, failed payments, delayed payouts and other payment exceptions. DRIVE STRATEGY, EXECUTION AND COMMERCIAL OUTCOMES - Develop and execute product roadmaps that align customer needs, payments strategy, platform architecture and Xero’s broader business objectives. - Establish clear product goals, success metrics and OKRs. - Take an active role in annual and quarterly planning, including funding, prioritisation and resourcing discussions. - Lead release and rollout strategies, ensuring that products are launched safely and effectively across customer cohorts and markets. - Monitor and interrogate customer, commercial and operational results, leading interventions where outcomes are not meeting expectations. - Understand the economics of payment products, including payment volume, adoption, pricing, processing costs, margins and revenue. - Make clear prioritization decisions that balance immediate delivery with the long-term evolution of Xero’s payments platform. LEAD THROUGH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL INFLUENCE - Build strong relationships across Product, Engineering, Design, Risk, Compliance, Operations, Finance, Partnerships and Go-to-Market teams. - Create clarity around what is being built, why it matters, how it will work and when it will be delivered. - Drive decision-making across complex stakeholder groups and act as a tie-breaker when consensus cannot be reached. - Communicate product strategy and complex payment concepts in a clear, structured and accessible way. - Represent the products you own in senior leadership, product, architecture and payments forums. - Lead delivery cadence and team rituals, adapting them as needed to improve outcomes. - Mentor and support other Product Managers, helping raise the standard of payments and product expertise across Xero. - Contribute to the development and continuous improvement of product practices across Xero. SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Customers can accept payments, understand the status of their money and access their funds through simple, trusted and reliable Xero experiences. - Customer-facing payment experiences and underlying platform capabilities operate as a cohesive end-to-end product. - Your product strategy and roadmap are clearly understood and aligned with Xero’s broader payments and business strategy. - Your team is focused on the most important customer, platform and commercial problems. - Payment adoption, transaction success, time to money, reliability and customer satisfaction are improving. - Payment flows are scalable, observable and resilient, with clear ownership of failures and exceptions. - New processors, payment methods and markets can be supported without unnecessary duplication or rework. - Product risks and dependencies are identified early and managed in partnership with Engineering, Risk, Compliance and Operations. - Your product has clearly defined customer, commercial, operational and technical success metrics that are continually measured. - Releases are delivered safely and iteratively, with learnings incorporated into future decisions. - Stakeholders understand the vision, strategy, roadmap and key trade-offs for your product. - Other Product Managers are developing through your coaching, knowledge-sharing and leadership. - You demonstrate and amplify Xero’s values. WHAT YOU’LL BRING WITH YOU ESSENTIAL PAYMENTS EXPERIENCE Deep, hands-on experience in the payments industry is essential for this role. You must have demonstrated experience building and operating payment products across both customer-facing experiences and back-end payments infrastructure. This should include meaningful experience in several of the following areas: - Merchant onboarding, activation, underwriting or payment-method enablement. - Online checkout, invoicing, payment acceptance or other merchant and payer experiences. - Card acquiring, payment processing, authorization, capture and transaction lifecycle management. - Pay-ins, payouts, disbursements, settlement and funds availability. - Payment service provider, acquiring bank, network or payment-rail integrations. - Payment orchestration, routing or multi-processor capabilities. - Refunds, disputes, chargebacks and payment exceptions. - Ledgering, reconciliation, transaction reporting or funds movement. - Payment risk, fraud, compliance or operational controls. - Payment performance, authorization optimisation, reliability or time-to-money improvement. You should understand how customer-facing payment experiences connect to the underlying movement of money, transaction states, processor integrations, risk decisions, operational workflows and financial records. Experience limited to general SaaS, accounting software, adjacent financial services or customer experience—without direct ownership of payment products and payment flows—will not be sufficient for this role. PRODUCT LEADERSHIP - Significant Product Management experience in a software development environment. - Demonstrated experience managing complex products across the full product lifecycle. - A strong track record of addressing customer needs through the innovative use of technology. - Experience developing successful product strategies, roadmaps and long-term plans. - Demonstrated ability to operate in technically complex and highly ambiguous product environments. - Strong product judgement and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information. - Experience defining and measuring customer, commercial, operational and technical outcomes. - Demonstrated ability to influence decisions at all levels of an organisation. TECHNICAL AND COMMERCIAL UNDERSTANDING - Strong understanding of payment system concepts, transaction flows and payment-provider integrations. - Ability to work closely with engineers and architects on platform design, APIs, data models, system dependencies and technical trade-offs. - Ability to translate customer and business needs into clear product requirements and technical specifications. - Understanding of payments economics, including transaction volume, processing costs, margins, pricing and revenue. - Experience evaluating third-party providers and build-versus-partner decisions. - Familiarity with the regulatory, risk, security and operational considerations involved in moving money. CUSTOMER AND DATA ORIENTATION - Strong experience conducting customer research and converting insights into product decisions. - Ability to identify and clearly articulate complex customer problems. - Experience developing MVPs, incremental solutions and experiments that validate product assumptions. - Strong analytical skills and experience using quantitative and qualitative data to make decisions. - Ability to establish meaningful product success criteria and monitor ongoing performance. - Ability to translate complex information for technical, commercial, operational and executive audiences. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP - Demonstrated success working with diverse stakeholder groups to achieve customer and commercial outcomes. - Ability to lead through influence across Product, Engineering, Design, Risk, Compliance, Operations, Finance and Go-to-Market teams. - Strong communication, facilitation and stakeholder-management skills. - Ability to navigate difficult decisions, resolve ambiguity and create alignment across teams and geographies. - Experience mentoring, coaching and supporting Product Managers and cross-functional team members. - A collaborative leadership style that improves the effectiveness of the people and teams around you. CRITICAL CAPABILITIES LOVE CUSTOMER PROBLEMS - Lead the use of customer research approaches and methodologies to generate meaningful insights. - Clearly define and articulate complex customer problems. - Develop incremental solutions and experiments that validate customer and product assumptions. - Ensure that underlying platform complexity results in simple and understandable customer experiences. LOOK TO THE FUTURE - Develop compelling product strategies and roadmaps that align customer, commercial and platform objectives. - Anticipate how immediate product decisions will affect future processors, payment methods, markets and products. - Identify opportunities to create reusable capabilities rather than isolated point solutions. - Explore new technologies, payment rails and business models that can improve how Xero customers move money. WORK THE XERO WAY - Lead effective product prioritisation and decision-making. - Establish strong product and delivery practices within the team. - Coordinate across products and teams to deliver end-to-end customer outcomes. - Ship iteratively, learn from outcomes and continuously improve the product. DEMONSTRATE COMMERCIAL ACUMEN - Understand the markets, customer segments and competitive environment for payment products. - Balance customer value, platform investment, risk and commercial outcomes. - Define success criteria that reflect customer needs and product-market fit. - Use payment volume, adoption, cost, margin and revenue data to guide product decisions. DO IT TOGETHER - Create alignment across complex and diverse stakeholder groups. - Communicate a clear and compelling product narrative. - Build productive relationships across teams, functions, markets and geographies. - Mentor others and raise the standard of product and payments expertise across Xero. EXPLORE THE DATA - Use data to understand customer behaviour, payment performance and operational outcomes. - Combine insights from customer research, transaction data, support interactions and market trends. - Translate information into clear recommendations and decisions. - Establish measurement and observability as core parts of product development. COMPENSATION & TOTAL REWARDS At Xero, we value the impact and skills you bring to the team. We don’t just hire for a role; we invest in people. We believe in a Total Package philosophy - which means your value isn't just a single number on a paycheck. While base salary is a core component, we look at your compensation through a holistic lens that includes equity, performance incentives, and world-class benefits. The expected base salary range for this role in: - California, New York and Washington: Minimum - Maximum USD $195,400 - $244,300 Individual pay is determined by various factors, including geography, level of experience, and the specific skills you bring to the role. In addition to base pay, Xero’s roles are eligible for the following forms of variable compensation: - Variable Pay: Permanent employees are eligible to participate in our equity (RSU) programs. You may also be eligible for performance-based cash or equity (RSUs) incentives depending on your role level, and company performance. - Comprehensive Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) match, and 21 days PTO, 10 days of Wellbeing leave, 5 days of Xtra Leave, 1 volunteer day, 12 paid holidays, paid parental leave. Further information included on our Xero Perks https://careers.xero.com/inside-xero/benefits-wellbeing/ page. Xero uses AI to help screen applications based on job-related qualifications. These tools assist our recruiters but do not make automated hiring decisions. A human recruiter reviews all candidates before any hiring action is taken.