Fintech Operations Director

🧑🏻💻 About the role

First things first: you want to know what you re actually applying for. It s impossible to capture every nuance of a role especially at a rapidly growing company like Mews but if we had to distill it down to a job description (which we do because this is a job description), it would be this:

Our platform powers some of the world s most innovative hotels, and our fintech business already processes more than $10B in card volume annually. As our payments business scales across markets, we re strengthening the operational engine behind it payments, fraud, and first-line compliance so we can move money safely, efficiently, and t s where you come in. As Fintech Operations Director, you ll act as the operational “COO” of our fintech business.

You ll lead a team of around 15 specialists, including four direct reports, across payment operations, fraud, chargebacks & disputes, and first-line compliance.

Your mission is:

• Mature and scale our payment and fraud operations to support the next phase of growth
• Standardise and automate processes to improve quality, resilience, and scalability
• Lead, motivate, and develop the team, providing the strategic direction and clarity they need to do their best work

You ll work closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, Regulatory, and Finance teams to ensure our operations are robust, efficient, and aligned with regulatory and scheme expectations and business goals.

✅ Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Own and execute the overall fintech operations strategy, ensuring payments, fraud and first-line compliance can scale with our growth.
• Lead day-to-day payment operations across all rails (cards, SEPA, APMs, wallets), including settlements, reconciliation, exceptions and incident management.
• Oversee first-line fraud and risk operations rule design, monitoring and investigations and drive initiatives that reduce losses while protecting customer experience.
• Run chargeback and dispute operations, improving recovery rates and keeping scheme and acquirer metrics within agreed thresholds.
• Lead first-line compliance operations (KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, ongoing reviews), partnering with second-line teams on policies, controls and audits.
• Build and develop a high-performing 15 person team (via four direct reports), setting clear priorities, expectations and growth paths.
• Drive continuous improvement and automation across tools, processes and workflows, using data and KPIs to prioritise what to fix first.
• Act as a senior operational counterpart to Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, Finance and Customer teams on new products, markets and initiatives.

🤝️ You ll be a great fit if you bring a few of the below with you:

• 8+ years experience in operational leadership within payments, fintech or regulated financial services, ideally in a high-growth environment.
• Proven ownership of payment operations end-to-end: settlements, reconciliation, exceptions and dispute management.
• Experience leading fraud and first-line compliance teams (KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, sanctions, investigations) in a regulated context.
• Track record of using data, automation and modern tooling (including AI where relevant) to improve processes and scale operations efficiently.
• Strong understanding of payment rails and fraud/monitoring tools, and comfort working across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory regimes.
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead teams of ~15+ people, including managers, with clear expectations, feedback and development paths.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills able to work closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance and Finance, and explain complex topics simply.
• High integrity, risk-aware mindset, and comfort operating both strategically and hands-on, especially in ambiguous or high-pressure situations.

To be eligible for this position, you must be based in one of the following US states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia,…