Senior Director, Payments

Caesars Entertainment • Jersey City, NJ

1d

About The Position

The Senior Director, Payments will lead Caesars Digital’s end-to-end payments business, owning the strategy, performance, economics, operations, and customer experience across deposits, withdrawals, reversals, refunds, and reconciliation. This leader will drive improvements in conversion, authorization rates, withdrawal speed, cost efficiency, reliability, vendor performance, and platform scalability across a complex, high-volume payments ecosystem. This role requires a commercially minded, data-driven operator who can balance customer experience, payment economics, risk, fraud, AML, and regulatory requirements while partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Finance, Treasury, Risk, Operations, Support, and VIP teams. The ideal candidate will bring executive presence, strong vendor management discipline, and the ability to build a high-performing team that delivers measurable improvements in payment performance and customer outcomes within the first 12 months.

Requirements

• 10–15+ years in payments, fintech, or financial services
• 2+ years in mobile Sports & iCasino payments a plus but not necessary
• Proven ownership of large-scale payment ecosystems (cards, ACH, wallets, APMs)
• Deep expertise in processors, PSPs, gateways, and transaction flows
• Strong track record optimizing cost, conversion, and fraud trade-offs
• Experience leading vendor negotiations and partner management
• Strong understanding of fraud, chargebacks, AML, and payment compliance
• Experience building or scaling payment platforms / orchestration layers
• Highly data-driven, with strong ownership of KPIs and financial performance
• Proven leader with executive presence, able to drive cross-functional execution and influence senior stakeholders
• Operates with a high sense of urgency and ownership mentality
• Deeply data-driven, with strong analytical and decision-making rigor
• Customer experience obsessed, especially across the payments journey
• Proven leader who can motivate, develop, and scale teams
• Proactive problem solver with a bias toward action
• Excellent communication and executive presentation skills

Nice To Haves

• 2+ years in mobile Sports & iCasino payments a plus but not necessary

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Payments Ownership: Own the full payments lifecycle: deposits, withdrawals, reversals, refunds, and reconciliation
• Act as the business owner for payments performance and customer experience, partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Finance, and Operations to drive outcomes
• Drive a customer-first payments journey, ensuring speed, reliability, and ease of use across all touchpoints
• Vendor & Partner Management: Own the strategic management of PSPs, processors, gateways, banks, and payment partners across the payment's ecosystem
• Serve as the primary business owner for vendor performance, relationship governance, contract value, and partner accountability
• Hold partners accountable to performance SLAs, uptime, authorization rates, speed, reliability, and issue resolution
• Identify, evaluate, negotiate with, and onboard new providers to expand capabilities, improve economics, and increase resiliency
• Payment Operations Excellence: Lead Payment Operations, identifying and resolving friction points across the end-to-end user journey
• Ensure fast, reliable deposits and withdrawals, minimizing failures, delays, and customer friction
• Drive operational improvements in exceptions, retries, reversals, and escalations
• Cost Optimization & Economics: Optimize payment transaction costs across all methods (cards, ACH, wallets, APMs)
• Lead routing and processor strategies to balance cost, conversion, and reliability
• Own vendor pricing negotiations and economic modeling to drive margin improvement
• Performance & KPI Ownership: Own and report on all core payment KPIs, including: Authorization / approval rates, Deposit conversion and success rates, Withdrawal speed and completion rates, Cost per transaction, Chargebacks and return rates
• Establish a data-driven operating cadence to monitor and continuously improve performance
• Risk, Compliance & AML: Own alignment with payments compliance, AML, and regulatory requirements for digital customers
• Partner closely with Risk & Fraud to optimize approval rates vs. loss prevention
• Ensure adherence to card network rules, NACHA, and jurisdictional regulations
• Platform, Product & Technology Partnership: Partner with: Payment Product Team to shape the roadmap, prioritization, and feature delivery; Architecture & Engineering to build and scale the payments platform (orchestration, routing, resiliency); Collaborate with development of capabilities such as smart routing, tokenization, and next-gen payment rails
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate closely with: Risk & Fraud – loss mitigation and approval optimization; Player Account / KYC – onboarding and first-time depositor success; Treasury & Finance – settlements, cash flow, and reconciliation; Customer Support & VIP – escalation handling and experience improvement; Analytics – KPI tracking, insights, and performance optimization
• Team Leadership: Build, lead, and develop a high-performing payments organization
• Foster a culture of accountability, urgency, and continuous improvement
• Drive strong cross-functional collaboration and alignment

Benefits

• medical, vision, and dental insurance
• life insurance
• disability insurance
• a 401(k)-matching program
• among other employee benefits
• short-term or long-term incentive compensation, including, but not limited to, cash bonuses
• paid Flexible Time Off
• paid company holidays

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed