Sr. Director, Enterprise Payments Risk and Oversight (Hybrid)

Overview Sr. Director, Enterprise Payments Risk and Oversight (Hybrid)

The Enterprise Payments Governance and Oversight team within the Enterprise Payments organization is seeking a dynamic Senior Director level leader who will play a pivotal role in driving the strategy and leading the execution of our enterprise-wide payments quality assurance program, payments authority and payments training functions. Overall, the team is responsible for the governance and oversight of end-to-end core payments functions for all payment types across the enterprise, including monitoring.

In this exciting role, you will be leading operational excellence and payment risk strategies leveraging modern technology. You will have the ability to modernize and improve quality assurance, payment authority frameworks and learning programs with the use of automations, artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge tools to eliminate manual friction, mitigate risk, and scale governance. You will have the ability to develop innovative solutions to resolve complex payment challenges while continuously elevating business-as-usual practices.

You will work closely with key stakeholders across the enterprise to ensure a dynamic, compliant, and well-managed payments ecosystem. This role offers high exposure across lines of business and direct engagement with Senior Executives to shape payments governance strategy and execute critical enterprise priorities.

The Role

As a Senior Director at Capital One, you will establish the strategic vision for your function and lead high performing teams across critical enterprise payments priorities. You will be responsible for building a forward-looking program that continues to leverage AI and workflow automation to transform quality assurance, streamline authority delegation, and deliver intelligent, scalable payments training across the enterprise.

Responsibilities 

• Strategic Leadership & Innovation: Serve as a key thought partner to define the strategic direction for Payments QA, Payments Authority, and Training—actively integrating AI capabilities, smart automation, and advanced analytics to continue to modernize the programs.

• Payments Quality Assurance (QA): Lead and continue to develop an automated, data-driven QA framework to monitor end-to-end payment lifecycles, detect anomalies, reduce defect rates, and ensure enterprise-wide compliance.

• Payments Authority & Governance: Oversee the enterprise Payments Authority framework, ensuring clear delegation of authority, automated control gates, and robust oversight across all payment rails and verticals while seeking ways to uplift and automate.

• Payments Training & Capability Building: Lead a modern payments curriculum—leveraging AI-powered learning platforms and interactive tech tools—to build deep payments domain expertise across lines of business, risk offices, and operational teams.

• Automation & Tech Modernization: Identify opportunities to deploy automation (e.g., RPA, natural language processing, predictive risk analytics) to streamline manual governance checks, operationalize controls, and improve monitoring efficiency.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Accountable Executives, Product, Tech, and Business Risk Offices to assess strategy, operations, and risks across all payment types (ACH, Wire, Cards, Real-Time Payments, etc.) throughout the payment lifecycle.

• Team Leadership & Culture: Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing team, fostering an inclusive, empowering environment focused on innovation, continuous learning, and operational excellence.

The Person

The ideal candidate is a proactive problem-solver with strong relationship management, influencing and communication skills, including story-telling. They will be adept at navigating complex challenges, driving process improvements, challenging the status quo through automation and tech tools, fostering collaboration across teams, and developing and executing strategic plans. A candidate's background would include some mix of risk management, payments expertise, process improvement, or project management in a fast-paced environment.

• Exhibit outstanding influencing skills to effectively drive program efforts within and outside of your vertical business area

• Strong foundational knowledge of risk management and/or payment types, rails, and operations (or a proven track record of rapidly mastering complex domain spaces)

• Proven ability to translate high-level enterprise goals into actionable, scalable operational strategies and automated models.

• Demonstrated experience or strong passion for process improvement leveraging AI, automation tools, and data analytics to optimize business processes, control environments, and learning programs

• Display a passion for people leadership; committed to coaching, growing talent and building inclusive, high-performing teams

• Have excellent communication and story-telling skills to align diverse stakeholders

• Possesses an ability to effectively collaborate with key stakeholders at all levels across the company to manage, inform and influence outcomes

• Is adaptable and flexible to change

Location: West Creek 5 (Richmond, VA) or Center 2 (McLean, VA) - this role is Hybrid, where you will be expected to spend 3 days per week working in office and the remainder of the week working virtually.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or Military Experience 

• At least 7 years of experience in risk management, payments, project management, process management, operations, or a combination

• At least 5 years of People Management experience

• At least 2 years of experience working with executive level stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree

• At least 10 years of experience serving in a strategic initiatives, risk management, payments, operations, or project management lead role in a large, matrixed organization

• At least 5 years of Financial Industry experience 

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

McLean, VA: $238,700 - $272,400 for Sr. Director, Risk Management

Richmond, VA: $217,000 - $247,700 for Sr. Director, Risk Management

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at the Capital One Careers website . Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

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Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).