Payments Lead

About the Role

As Payments Lead, you’ll own the full lifecycle of payments at Kalshi — from strategy to hands-on execution. You’ll manage and coordinate the roadmap for deposits, withdrawals, and PSP integrations, while also directly managing providers, resolving issues, and monitoring day-to-day performance. You’ll sit at the intersection of product, operations, engineering, compliance, and growth, ensuring that payments are reliable, fast, and delightful.

What You’ll Do

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the payments roadmap: prioritize and drive initiatives that improve payment success, speed, and user experience in coordination with Engineering and Growth and other parts of the organization.
• Manage PSPs and financial partners: negotiate terms, oversee performance, and troubleshoot operational issues with processors, banks, and other partners.
• Optimize conversion and payouts: continuously improve the deposit and withdrawal experience, authorization rates, and settlement times through data-driven experimentation.
• Monitor and analyze payment health: build dashboards, track KPIs (authorization rates, declines, chargebacks, latency), and identify root causes.
• Ensure compliance and regulatory alignment: Partner with Legal/Compliance to handle KYC, AML, and CFTC-related obligations in the payments flow.
• Manage fraud prevention and response: manage fraud tools and policies, ensuring a balance between risk control and user experience. Monitor fraud and compliance health.
• Be hands-on: dive into payment ops workflows, test new integrations, reconcile issues, and own execution when needed.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or product operations.
• Strong understanding of the payments ecosystem: PSPs, acquirers, processors, payment methods, fraud tools, and settlement processes.
• Experience leading cross-functional projects involving engineering, compliance, and growth.
• Proven negotiation and vendor management skills with PSPs and banks.
• Analytical and technical proficiency: able to model economics, analyze funnel data, and interpret API documentation.
• Bias toward action: comfortable switching between strategic planning and hands-on execution.
• Excellent communication and project management skills.