Airbnb Senior Payments Operations Manager 

United States 

440279187

A Typical Day:

Operational Enablement & Execution

• Partner cross-functionally to operationalize core workflows for Airbnb’s payments platform—including third-party payments, unpaid payouts, blocked third-party payments, dormant accounts, liens, garnishments, and escheatment—ensuring each has clear ownership, documented processes, appropriate tooling, and reliable execution with defined performance metrics and SLAs.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, Partnerships, Treasury, Customer Support, FP&A, and regional teams to align on workflow design, tooling needs, volume projections, resource planning, and budgeting.
• Balance control and experience, ensuring operational processes meet policy, risk, and compliance requirements while minimizing friction for guests and hosts.
• Identify and implement optimization opportunities across money-movement operations, leveraging automation, AI, and data insights to improve accuracy, speed, and scalability.
• Close ownership gaps by establishing clear accountability, measurable SLAs, and consistent global execution standards.
• Develop playbooks, procedures, and escalation paths that define how payments operations are executed and governed across markets and teams.
• May eventually lead directly or indirectly a team of people to enable and execute operations.

Policies, Procedures & Standards

• Define and maintain clear policies and procedures that guide payment operations, ensuring ownership, consistency, and compliance globally.
• Embed controls into everyday work so processes meet legal and regulatory requirements without adding unnecessary friction.
• Keep policies and procedures current and simple, updating them as products, markets, or regulations evolve, and ensuring teams know how to apply them in daily operations.
• In partnership with the platform product team, define and implement operational policies, controls, and SOPs ahead of product launches to ensure readiness.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Act as the link between Product, Treasury, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Partnerships, and regional teams, turning product and policy intent into practical operations.
• Engage early in new launches and programs to ensure readiness, clear ownership, and smooth execution.
• Work with regional teams to adapt global processes to local needs while maintaining consistency and compliance.
• Align priorities across teams to remove blockers, reduce duplication, and deliver payments initiatives efficiently..

Continuous Improvement

• Monitor performance data and incidents to identify trends, friction points, and improvement opportunities across pay-in and payout operations.
• Simplify and standardize workflows to enhance efficiency, reduce manual effort, and improve accuracy and speed.
• Use automation, AI, and insights to proactively improve scalability and reliability.
• Create feedback loops that capture lessons learned from incidents and launches, feeding them into process and platform design.
• Foster a culture of operational excellence, where teams continuously refine how payments operations are delivered and measured for reliability, control, and customer impact.

Your Expertise:

• 12+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or financial services, with a focus on operations, enablement, or process management.
• Proven success in building and scaling operational payment processes across complex, cross-functional organizations.
• Deep understanding of pay-ins, payouts, operational workflows, forecasting, and exception management, including regulatory, compliance, and policy requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to translate strategy and policy into actionable, scalable operations.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills across Product, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and Operations teams.
• Analytical and structured thinker with a bias for execution and continuous improvement.
• Excellent communicator, able to simplify complex concepts and influence effectively across all levels of the organization.

Offices: United States