Senior Product Manager, Payments (Contract)

Job description

**This is a remote-friendly role. Ideally, candidates will sit in the following states: AL, AZ, CA, CO, DC, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, LA, MA, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OR, OH, PA, RI, SC, TX, VA, WA, WI.** **At this time, Tapcheck does not provide sponsorship for employment-based visas (e.g., H-1B, L-1, TN, etc.). Therefore, candidates must already possess the right to work in the United States without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future.** **About the Job** Tapcheck's Platform organization is building the next generation of our core financial infrastructure across Money Movement, Risk, and the Execution Foundation. We're looking for a hands-on Senior Product Manager with deep payments and money-movement experience who can step into active work immediately and help us turn complex financial flows into products and platform capabilities that Engineering can build, operate, and scale. This is not a strategy-only role, and not a requirements coordinator role. You will work directly with Engineering and Product leadership from week one, taking ambiguous problems and existing initiatives, pressure-testing requirements, identifying gaps, making product decisions, and driving them through implementation. The initial focus will include Payments, ACH and bank rails, Payouts/Disbursements, Repayments, Card, Payment Orchestration, Settlement/Reconciliation, and Risk & Fraud. The role is intentionally broad because the Platform team is working across multiple connected money-movement capabilities. **What You'll Do** - Own product definition for money-movement capabilities, from problem definition through requirements, technical design, launch, and iteration - Pressure-test existing requirements and designs across Payments, Repayments, Card, Orchestration, Payouts, Settlements/Reconciliation, and Risk & Fraud, identifying missing requirements, edge cases, conflicting assumptions, and unresolved product decisions - Partner directly with Engineering to translate complex business and financial requirements into clear PRDs, functional requirements, workflows, state transitions, API requirements, acceptance criteria, and launch criteria - Work at the transaction level when necessary, understanding payment states, processor responses, retries, returns, failures, reconciliation issues, and operational exceptions - Help define how money moves through the platform across funding, authorization, debit/credit, processing, settlement, payout, recovery, and exception flows - Partner with Risk, Legal, Compliance, Finance, Data, Operations, and Engineering to ensure product decisions account for financial correctness, risk, regulatory requirements, operational impact, and customer experience - Drive active initiatives including Risk, Payouts, and related Money Movement workstreams - Use data and operational signals to identify problems and measure outcomes, including payment success/failure, loss, recovery, payout performance, reconciliation breaks, cost, and operational volume - Surface risks and unresolved decisions early, make recommendations, and drive issues to resolution - Own the day-to-day product execution needed to keep engineering teams moving: backlog refinement, requirements reviews, prioritization, stakeholder alignment, launch readiness, and post-launch iteration - Flex across Platform workstreams as priorities evolve, moving between a payment-rail problem, a payout failure, a reconciliation issue, or a risk-decisioning requirement without needing a long ramp **What You've Done** **Required** - Spent 8+ years in product management, with substantial hands-on experience in payments, money movement, financial infrastructure, fintech, or risk - Directly owned payment or money-movement products and flows, personally shipping products involving payment rails, bank transfers, cards, payouts, repayments, payment orchestration, settlement/reconciliation, or transaction risk - Built deep expertise in at least one payments or money-movement domain, with the ability to understand the underlying transaction flow and system behavior, not just the customer-facing experience - Worked directly with payment rails, processors, banks, or PSPs such as ACH, RTP, card networks/processors, or bank payment infrastructure - Translated ambiguous problems into engineering-ready product requirements and worked closely with engineers through implementation - Demonstrated strong technical fluency, comfortable discussing transaction lifecycles, state machines, APIs, events/webhooks, retries, idempotency, processor integrations, reconciliation, settlement, and failure handling - Used payment, risk, financial, or operational metrics to make product decisions - Operated with high autonomy and incomplete information, contributing from week one - Communicated effectively in writing and in person across Engineering, Risk, Legal/Compliance, Finance, Data, and Operations **Preferred** - Worked across multiple areas of money movement, such as ACH/bank rails, cards, payouts, payment orchestration, settlement/reconciliation, repayments, or fraud/risk decisioning - Built or operated payment platforms, payment orchestration, routing, multi-processor integrations, or money-movement infrastructure - Worked with payment exceptions, returns, retries, reversals, refunds, disputes, reconciliation, or recovery flows - Worked with risk/fraud decisioning engines or financial controls - Worked in Earned Wage Access, consumer lending, wage advance, payroll, or adjacent financial products - Worked in a platform organization or built 0→1 financial infrastructure - Operated products where reliability, financial correctness, transaction success, loss, recovery, and basis-point economics matter - Brought Staff, Principal, Lead, or equivalent-level product management experience **This Role Is a Great Fit If You...** - Can look at a payment flow and quickly identify what is missing - Can sit with an engineer and discuss the implications of a transaction state, timeout, retry, processor failure, or reconciliation break - Don't stop at writing the PRD, and stay close through implementation and launch - Are comfortable pulling data, investigating failed transactions, and figuring out what is actually happening - Can distinguish a product problem from a technical problem, an operational problem, and a risk problem - Can make decisions when the requirements aren't fully defined - Enjoy complex financial infrastructure rather than being intimidated by it - Understand that in payments, “mostly works” isn't good enough **What This Role Is Not** - Not a strategy-only product management role - Not a project manager role - Not a business analyst / requirements-only role - Not a consumer checkout PM role with limited exposure to underlying money movement - Not a role where you spend the first 60–90 days learning the payments domain We're looking for someone who already knows payments and can immediately help us build better payment infrastructure. **Engagement Details** - **Engagement**: Direct contract with Tapcheck. Agency and third-party staffing submissions will not be considered. - **Initial term:** 90 days, with the option to extend based on performance and business need. - **Reporting to:** Senior Director of Product, Platform. - **Location**: Remote, Central or Pacific time zones. **About Tapcheck** Tapcheck is a digital platform offering an easy and convenient way to access on-demand earnings early. Available at no cost to employers, our app-based on-demand pay solution helps relieve the financial stress that many employees experience on a daily basis. The Tapcheck team is passionate about our mission to improve financial wellness and boost business productivity. By giving workers the ability to transfer wages they've earned directly to their bank account or pay card without waiting for payday, Tapcheck eliminates the need for high-interest payday loans or employer-funded cash advances. **How We Get Things Done** Our core values act as a steadfast guide, directing our decisions and anchoring our actions. We consider these values non-negotiable, especially when it comes to our hiring process. - **Humility:** We believe in the power of humility. We value team players who are down-to-earth, respectful, and open to learning from others. Our employees approach challenges with a positive attitude, acknowledging their strengths and weaknesses while celebrating the achievements of their colleagues. - **Grit:** We admire individuals with grit, those who demonstrate unwavering determination and resilience in the face of obstacles. At Tapcheck, we take pride in overcoming challenges together, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and embracing failure as an opportunity for growth. - **Raising the Bar:** Continuous improvement is at the heart of our culture. We are committed to setting high standards and pushing ourselves to exceed them. We seek employees who are innovative and strive for excellence, constantly seeking ways to enhance our products, services, and processes. - **Striving for Growth:** We foster an environment that encourages personal and professional development. Our employees are driven to learn, grow, and adapt to new circumstances. We support individuals who take initiative, seek out new challenges, and actively contribute to their own growth and the growth of the company. **Why Join Tapcheck?** - **Mission that matters.** We're changing how Americans access their pay, giving workers financial flexibility without the debt trap of payday loans. - **A team that lives its values.** Humility, grit, and a genuine drive to raise the bar, every day. **Compensation** Contract rate is competitive and commensurate with experience. Full details are shared as part of the hiring process. *Tapcheck, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.*