Fractional Product Owner

We need a hands-on Fractional Product Owner who lives at the intersection of payments processing and telemedicine. You’ll own discovery, requirements, and delivery for products serving telehealth merchants - DTC platforms, hormone therapy, mental health, compounded medications, and similar verticals that sit squarely in the high-risk payments category.

This is a discovery-heavy role. We’re not looking for someone to manage an existing backlog - we’re looking for someone who can go find out what to build: talk to merchants, talk to our internal underwriting, and risk teams, study the competitive and regulatory landscape, and come back with prioritized, well-scoped product bets.

What you will own

• Market research on the telehealth payments landscape - competitors, processor offerings, sponsor bank appetite, card brand posture, and where the underserved gaps are
• User interviews with telehealth merchants, prospective merchants, underwriting analysts, risk officers, and sales - and the synthesis that turns those conversations into product direction
• Needs assessment and prioritization - translating discovery into a written roadmap with clear bets, trade-offs, and success metrics
• Requirements and user stories for the engineering team - onboarding flows, underwriting automation, risk decisioning, compliance review, and reporting
• Product specs for AI/LLM-driven automation in website review, document review, and underwriting triage
• Partnering with compliance on requirements driven by Visa, Mastercard, and sponsor bank rules for telehealth and high-risk verticals, * A short note (under 200 words) on a telehealth or high-risk payments product you’ve shipped - including the discovery work you did, your specific role, and the outcome
• Resume or LinkedIn
• Hourly or monthly rate expectation

Argyle Payments supports payment processing for a wide variety of merchants, including retail, ecommerce, and niche merchants who require more attention, care and monitoring. The company streamlines the merchant application process through in-house credit underwriting and timely decisioning, as well as maximizing customer success through compliance support, governance best practices and a metrics-driven approach. Registered ISO/MSP of North American Banking Company, Roseville, MN and SSB Bank, Pittsburgh, PA and partners with several other leading banks and industry institutions to find the right home for each business it works with to get merchant accounts approved. A privately held Nevada corporation, Argyle has offices in Irvine and Simi Valley, California. For more information, please visit argylepayments.com.

Do you have experience in Visa requirements compliance?, * 7+ years in product management or product ownership, with deep time in payments processing or merchant acquiring (ISO, payfac, processor, gateway, or sponsor bank)

• Direct experience in the telemedicine vertical - DTC telehealth, compounded medications, GLP-1s, hormone therapy, mental health, peptides - and the unique payments, regulatory, and chargeback dynamics these merchants face
• High-risk merchant underwriting fluency - MATCH/TMF, chargeback thresholds, reserves, MCC restrictions, prohibited verticals, and the underwriting documentation cycle
• Demonstrated discovery chops - you’ve run structured user interview programs, market research, and competitive analysis, and you can show artifacts (interview guides, synthesis docs, opportunity assessments) from prior roles
• Strong needs-assessment instincts - you can sit with a vague problem (“our telehealth onboarding is slow”), do the discovery, and come back with a written recommendation on what’s worth building and what isn’t
• Comfortable writing crisp specs and user stories; experience running Agile/Scrum ceremonies

Technical skills & tooling

• JIRA - fluent in backlog management, sprint planning, epic/story hierarchy, custom workflows, and JQL for reporting
• Confluence (or Notion) - comfortable building and maintaining product documentation, PRDs, and decision logs
• Figma - able to read, comment on, and collaborate inside design files; can sketch low-fi wireframes to communicate intent (you don’t need to be a designer, but you shouldn’t need one to express an idea)
• Miro / FigJam / Lucidchart - for journey mapping, workflow diagrams, and discovery synthesis
• SQL fluency - can write your own queries to validate assumptions, pull cohort data, and check whether features are actually being used; not dependent on analysts for basic answers
• AI-native workflow - actively using LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) in your day-to-day product work - drafting specs, synthesizing interview notes, competitive scans, summarizing call transcripts
• API literacy - can read API docs, understand REST/webhook patterns, and write requirements that engineers don’t have to translate
• User research tools - familiarity with Dovetail, Grain, Otter, or similar for interview capture and synthesis is a plus
• Roadmapping - Productboard, Aha!, or equivalent

Strongly preferred

• Familiarity with TSYS, First Data/Fiserv, or similar processor back-ends
• Experience with internal CRM and onboarding systems (Salesforce or custom platforms)
• Exposure to AI/LLM-driven automation in underwriting or compliance review
• Working knowledge of card brand integrity programs (Visa VIRP/VAMP/VDMP, Mastercard BRAM/ECP)
• Understanding of the telehealth regulatory landscape (FDA, FTC, state medical boards, Ryan Haight Act, DEA scheduling, compounding rules)
• Prior fractional or advisory work - you know how to be effective on limited hours, * Direct communicator who can push back without burning relationships
• Comfortable in ambiguity - can turn a half-defined problem into a written recommendation by end of week
• Bias for action; allergic to analysis paralysis
• Strong written communication - most of your output is artifacts (interview synthesis, opportunity briefs, specs, decision docs)

$100 - $150 an hour - Contract, Engagement details

• 15-25 hrs/week, flexible scheduling
• 4+ hours of daily overlap with US Pacific business hours, even better if you are close to our Irvine office.
• 1099 or Corp-To-Corp; rate negotiable based on experience

Argyle Payments is a leading provider in the payment processing industry, delivering innovative and secure solutions to businesses of all sizes. With a commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction, we empower merchants to succeed in an ever-evolving marketplace.