Network Director - Business Payments & Operations

We are looking for a strategic Network Director to lead the development and management of global banking and payment scheme partnerships. This role balances high-level strategic expansion with the operational rigor required to maintain 24/7 network reliability. You will be responsible for ensuring our infrastructure - ranging from RTP and SWIFT to virtual accounts - is scalable, cost-efficient, and optimized for performance.

Network Strategy & Development

• Define & Execute Roadmap: Lead global strategy for banking and payment scheme partnerships, expanding direct access to SEPA, Faster Payments, and emerging real-time rails in partnership with regional network teams.
• Scale Connectivity: Drive infrastructure development for virtual accounts, local clearing, and SWIFT integration to strengthen priority cross-border payment corridors.

Partnership Management

• Relationship Ownership: Manage global relationships with banks, FIs, and schemes (including SWIFT), ensuring high operational reliability and service standards.
• Commercial Negotiation: Structure and negotiate agreements that enable scalable, cost-efficient payment flows across all regional markets.

Network Operations & Excellence

• Quality of Service (QoS): Establish and monitor critical performance KPIs (latency, throughput, and success rates). Act as the primary internal stakeholder for network performance reporting and remediation.
• Outage Management: Impact analysis of network disruptions to identify key areas to focus on. Manage critical communications with network partners, drive "root cause analysis" (RCA) processes, and implement systemic changes to prevent recurrence.
• Credit Terms Management: Partner with Treasury & regional teams to identify top corridors to negotiate favorable credit terms and post funding arrangements with network partners.

Network Optimization

• Performance & Reliability: Optimize network security, uptime, and direct connectivity to payment schemes to support high-value, complex payment flows.
• Standards & Risk: Enforce global cross-border compliance for payment messaging and proactively identify gaps in infrastructure, coverage, or connectivity to mitigate operational and technical risk.
• Cost & Efficiency: Drive continuous improvements in FX competitiveness, settlement latency, and overall network unit costs.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Cross-Functional Strategy: Partner with Product, Treasury, Compliance, and Commercial teams to align network capabilities with evolving customer needs and revenue goals.
• Governance & Scalability: Establish robust governance frameworks and scalable processes to support long-term business growth and product expansion.

• Experience: 9+ years in financial services, payments, or fintech. Deep expertise in global payment infrastructure (SWIFT, SEPA, UK Faster Payments, RTP) and proven success managing bank/scheme partnerships.
• Strategic Problem Solving: A data-driven mindset with a track record of resolving complex cross-border operational and commercial challenges. Creative in developing innovative partnership models.
• Operational Excellence: Skilled in managing network quality, outage responses, and liquidity/credit terms.
• Leadership & Execution: Exceptional project management and negotiation skills. Ability to manage multiple concurrent, high-stakes initiatives across cross-functional teams.
• Interpersonal: Stellar relationship management, with the communication skills necessary to bridge technical gaps with commercial goals.