Head of Payment Operations

Who is Shift?

Shift provides business finance to small and medium businesses (SMEs) in Australia, including Business Overdraft, Equipment Line, Asset Finance and Trade Account. Since 2014, Shift has funded more than 30,000 Australian businesses.

At Shift, our unique approach to product innovation combined with our collaborative culture means you can build your career in a supportive environment. You’ll be joining a diverse team of over 300 people who are always looking to deliver better outcomes for Australian businesses.

About the role:

As Head of Payment Operations, you will be responsible for building and scaling Shift's payment operations function. You will play a key role in reducing regulatory, reputational, and fraud risk to the business and lead the team that manages payment operations on an ongoing basis. The initial focus will be on Direct Entry and NPP, but the role’s scope will expand alongside Shift’s growing payments product offering, including future rails and methods such as card issuing, BPAY, or PayTo, as well as the related vendor and infrastructure relationships.

What you'll do:

• Design and implement bank-quality payment operations processes across Direct Entry and NPP, with scalability for additional payment channels as Shift's offerings grow.
• Enhance transaction monitoring capability, moving from foundational rules to mature, risk-based detection, including rule design, alert triage and escalation.
• Collaborate with Product and Technology to grow Shift’s fraud monitoring function, covering detection, investigation, and case management.
• Build robust disputes and chargeback capabilities, managing scheme rules, regulatory obligations, customer dispute handling, and recovery processes.
• Recruit, build, and lead a skilled payment operations team, providing 24/7 coverage and service.
• Establish and maintain payment operations policies, procedures, and controls to meet regulatory expectations, embedding a governance framework within operations.
• Oversee SLAs for vendors, payment infrastructure, and processing partners in partnership with Product and Line 2 Risk, ensuring performance and risk obligations are met.
• Define and embed a performance framework using KPIs, data, and client insights to drive accountability and continuous improvement.
• Manage operational incidents for payment processing and fraud events, driving root cause analysis and response.
• Act as the business’ primary point of engagement for payment operations, educating stakeholders across Product, Risk, Customer Service, and executive leadership.
• Report on payment operations performance, risk posture, and incident trends to the Director of Operations and SLT as required.

What you'll bring:

• Demonstrated experience establishing or embedding payment operations capabilities, including people leadership, policy, and governance within regulated financial services.
• Expertise in Direct Entry and NPP payment rails, fraud monitoring, and disputes/chargebacks processes.
• Strong regulatory fluency and ability to translate requirements into operational controls.
• Experience managing vendors, service level agreements, or managed service providers in a payments or financial services context preferred.
• Proven people leadership skills, including experience building teams from a low base.
• Financial services industry experience.
• Skills in process mapping and optimisation, customer journey analysis, requirements definition, and data-led analysis.
• Experience in options analysis, business case development, stakeholder management, and executive communication.

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Key benefits:

• Hybrid working: we’re headquartered in North Sydney with state-based workplaces and offer a hybrid work policy. Our offices have spaces for collaboration, socialising and focused work.
• Parental leave: up to 26 weeks paid.
• Strategy Week: twice a year the whole team comes together to hear the business strategy and product and technology roadmap first-hand, with fortnightly all-company business updates in between.
• Flat structure: everyone can learn from each other and senior leaders across the business.
• Wellbeing: benefits supporting your physical, psychological and financial wellbeing, from a day off on your birthday to end of trip facilities.

Additional information:

If you don’t meet all the qualifications or skills but think you’d be a great fit, please apply anyway.

Learn more about working at Shift at shift.com.au/careers http://shift.com.au/careers.

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