Program Lead, Payments

Blend360

About The Position

We are seeking a Program Coordination Lead to provide program-level oversight, risk transparency, and executive-ready reporting for a time-sensitive payments implementation. This role operates across multiple internal teams and external ecosystem partners, ensuring clarity, alignment, and proactive risk management while preserving existing project management ownership and client decision rights. The ideal candidate brings deep contextual knowledge of card payments delivery models and can quickly establish operating rhythm, visibility, and accountability in a fast-moving, matrixed environment.

Requirements

8–12+ years of experience in payments, card programs, or financial services implementations.
Proven experience coordinating network–issuer–processor delivery models.
Demonstrated success operating at program or portfolio level under tight regulatory or market deadlines.
Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
Ability to quickly assess program maturity and implement structured operating rhythm.
Working knowledge of the card payments ecosystem, including networks, issuers, processors, and certification dependencies.
Experience supporting issuer-led card program implementations with shared accountability across multiple parties.
Understanding of certifications, endpoint readiness, production readiness gates, and their impact on critical path delivery.
Ability to recognize external dependency risks even when not directly managing technical execution.
Experience working within global, matrixed organizations and influencing outcomes through structured escalation and alignment.

Responsibilities

Act as the central coordination point across internal stakeholders and external partners, ensuring streamlined communication and consolidated status visibility.
Integrate updates from parallel workstreams into clear, consistent, and outcome-oriented program reporting.
Maintain a holistic view of program health, identifying interdependencies, sequencing impacts, and critical path risks.
Proactively identify risks, blockers, and external dependency impacts before they escalate.
Drive mitigation strategies in partnership with workstream owners.
Ensure issues are clearly articulated, appropriately escalated, and resolved with a focus on delivery outcomes.
Represent client priorities, constraints, and timeline commitments across all internal and partner discussions.
Translate complex, multi-party delivery updates into concise, executive-ready status reports.
Provide clear visibility into status, risks, dependencies, and next steps.
Establish program operating cadence within days of engagement.
Coordinate around North America-specific requirements and regulatory timelines.
Minimize cross-region friction and time-zone related delays.
Work closely with the existing Project Manager while maintaining clear role boundaries and preserving PM execution ownership.
Reinforce accountability without assuming task-level direction or execution control.