Senior Payments Operations Lead

Job Description

Job Description

Tabs is the AI Operating System for Revenue, built for modern finance and accounting teams. It combines deep revenue and accounting expertise with the agents and applications needed to run revenue work end to end. Tabs understands customer and contract context, applies accounting logic, and executes critical workflows with built in controls, auditability, and human oversight. With Tabs, finance teams can move from manually managing revenue workflows to directing outcomes while the system executes the work.

We're hiring a Senior Payments Operations Lead to build and operate Tabs' payments-risk and operations program as we bring payments in-house. You will be our first dedicated PayOps leader, reporting to the VP of Finance and partnering closely with Finance, Product, Engineering, Support, Legal, commercial teams, and our payment partners.

You'll bring established payments expertise, design practical controls informed by industry best practices and benchmarks, and own the day-to-day function. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will define the initial program and make consequential risk decisions, while personally operating critical workflows and improving them as Tabs Pay scales.

Tabs Pay serves large North American B2B merchants across an ACH-first payment mix with a growing card share. That concentration makes sound merchant-risk judgment, financial integrity, and operational precision especially important.

• Build and run the initial PayOps program, including policies, controls, operating cadences, runbooks, decision rights, and escalation paths.

• Design merchant-risk and reserve strategy: segmentation, acceptance criteria, reserve methodologies, ongoing monitoring, exceptions, and the mechanics for funding, holding, offsetting, adjusting, and releasing reserves.

• Own daily financial integrity and reconciliation across processor, bank, ledger, and merchant-settlement records, including tolerances, alerts, investigations, service levels, and closure.

• Run operational processes for ACH returns, card disputes and chargebacks, fraud review, negative balances, merchant holds, and incidents.

• Define KPIs and thresholds for loss exposure, reserve adequacy, return and dispute rates, reconciliation breaks, exception aging, and time to resolution.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to translate risk and operations requirements into practical product and system decisions.

• Partner with Support and commercial teams to create clear merchant communications, escalation paths, and workable service experiences.

• Own operating relationships with processors, acquirers, banks, networks, vendors, and other payment partners.

• Make pragmatic build, buy, and partner decisions; improve and scale the program as volume and complexity grow.

• Typically 7+ years of experience in payments operations, merchant risk, fraud, disputes, or an adjacent function; exceptional candidates with 5+ years and clear end-to-end ownership may be considered.

• Meaningful experience at a payment facilitator, processor, acquirer, bank, platform payments business, or B2B fintech.

• Demonstrated ownership of consequential payments-risk or operating outcomes - not only participation in a broader team.

• Fluency in merchant-risk assessment and reserve mechanics, including how reserves are calculated, funded, held, adjusted, offset, reviewed, and released.

• Strong understanding of ACH returns, card disputes and chargebacks, reconciliation, fraud controls, negative balances, and payment-partner operations.

• Experience building or materially improving a payments process, control environment, or operating program.

• Ability to use concrete inputs, benchmarks, KPIs, and thresholds to make and explain decisions.

• Strong cross-functional leadership and structured communication with technical, financial, operational, and customer-facing partners.

• Comfort operating hands-on in an early-stage environment while building systems that can scale.

• Working knowledge of card acquiring mechanics (interchange, network rules, chargebacks, settlement) is valuable. However, we're flexible on depth—strong ACH expertise with demonstrated ability to learn card operations is equally compelling. We're looking for someone who understands payment rails deeply in at least one area and can build capability in others.

• Enthusiasm for building automation and AI-enabled operational tools; you're interested in identifying high-leverage manual workflows and designing systems to replace them with durable, scalable automation.

• B2B payments, billing, or invoicing platforms with concentrated merchant exposure.

• Merchant underwriting, reserve policy, or portfolio monitoring.

• Merchant-facing dispute self-service or risk-related support workflows.

• Acquirer or processor migration affecting live merchant volume.

• Treasury, banking-partner, network, or vendor relationship management.

• Cross-border payments, multi-currency flows, or international money movement—useful context if Tabs Pay expands globally.

This role is based in New York City, 5 days a week at our Soho office.

• Competitive compensation and equity

• Unlimited PTO

• Up to 100% employer covered monthly healthcare premium (medical, dental, vision)

• Lunch provided via Sharebite, plus dinner for any later in office days.

• Parental leave up to 12 weeks

• Tax free commuter and parking benefits

• Voluntary insurances (Life, Hospital, Critical Illness, Accident)

• Employee Assistance Program (Rightway)

• Free One Medical Membership

• 401k

Tabs is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome teammates of all identities and do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We’re committed to creating an environment where everyone can grow, contribute, and feel comfortable being themselves.

Compensation Range: $140K - $170K