As the Director, Payments Enterprise Risk Management, you will play a critical leadership role in overseeing risks tied to payment network operations, transaction flows, and financial exposures. You will design and drive an enterprise-wide risk strategy that ensures operational excellence, fraud prevention, regulatory compliance, and long-term resilience of PayPal’s global payments ecosystem.
Essential Responsibilities:
- Establish overall business or technical strategy for risk management with significant impact on operations.
- Influence executive-level decision-making through strategic risk assessments and recommendations.
- Partner with stakeholders to implement strategies that reduce or transfer identified risks.
- Monitor and analyze risk exposure to ensure alignment with organizational objectives.
- Lead initiatives that contribute to long-term sustainability and resilience in the face of uncertainty.
Expected Qualifications:
- Minimum of 15 years of relevant work experience and a Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
Risk Strategy & Governance
- Design and execute PayPal’s enterprise-wide payments risk strategy as part of the second line of defense across fraud, credit, liquidity, and operational risk.
- Establish frameworks for risk assessment, prioritization, and control design, aligning strategies across business functions and geographies.
- Lead operational risk committees and contribute to senior leadership forums, providing regular insights and recommendations to executives and the board.
Holistic Payments Risk Oversight
- Oversee end-to-end risk assessments of payment operations, including reconciliation, ledger integrity, settlement, and exception management.
- Lead efforts to mitigate risks tied to network processing, infrastructure failures, payment fraud, anomalies, processing errors, and vendor exposures.
- Identify, monitor, and report key risk indicators (KRIs) and operational loss events; ensure effective remediation and prevention plans.
Operational Resilience & Controls
- Develop and enhance operational controls to strengthen payment processing integrity, scalability, and fraud defenses.
- Oversee risk modeling initiatives to proactively identify vulnerabilities in transaction networks and implement practical responses.
- Lead incident management, including escalation, investigation, root cause analysis, containment, and remediation.
- Partner with business, technology, compliance, and governance teams to implement process enhancements that improve resilience.
Partnership & Collaboration
- Build strong relationships with payment networks, regulators, financial institutions, and processing partners to strengthen trust and reduce ecosystem-wide risks.
- Partner with fraud, compliance, credit, liquidity, product, engineering, treasury, legal, and other teams to ensure comprehensive risk coverage.
- Provide strategic risk guidance on new payment products, projects, and technology deployments.
Leadership & Culture
- Inspire and mentor diverse talent within risk and payments teams, fostering collaboration, innovation, and accountability.
- Act as a thought leader in advancing PayPal’s capabilities in payments risk, operational resilience, fraud management, and governance.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
- 12–15+ years of experience in payments, operational risk, fraud prevention, enterprise risk management, or financial regulation.
- In-depth expertise in payment systems, settlement processes, and risk frameworks (SOX, COSO, or equivalent).
- Proven track record of success in complex financial or fintech environments.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with high-volume, high-value payment networks in a fintech, payments processor, or financial institution.
- Strong technical acumen for collaborating with engineering and risk teams on tools, models, and algorithms.
- Familiarity with global payment requirements, fraud trends, regulatory standards, and compliance practices.
- Exceptional leadership, communication, and executive influencing skills.
- Demonstrated ability to build cross-functional and external partnerships.
Travel Percent:
The total compensation for this practice may include an annual performance bonus (or other incentive compensation, as applicable), equity, and medical, dental, vision, and other benefits. For more information, visit .
The US national annual pay range for this role is $152,500 to $262,350
Our Benefits:
Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please