Senior Lead Product Manager (API/Mobile)

Early Warning® • Chicago, IL

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses. Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment. Candidates responding to this position must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship. We are looking for a hands-on technical product manager to help shape Paze Mobile SDKs as we look to simplify integrations for mobile-first merchants. This role will work closely with our merchants, solutions and implementations team to ensure we can continuously drive down the time to integrate for merchants on iOS and Android platforms. The Senior Lead Product Manager is the champion responsible for evaluating and determining the product(s) and/or features to be built and delivered to our customers. The role will build, align, and motivate a cross-functional team to develop a common understanding of the customers’ pain points and the passion to solve issues and develop innovative solutions that delight customers. The role may lead multiple products.

Requirements

• Bachelors degree.
• 9 or more years of related work experience OR post-secondary degree and at least 4 years of related work experience.
• Demonstrated experience in design thinking and agile development process and methodology.
• Demonstrated leadership experience and cross-functional collaboration experience.
• Proven experience in and passion for building and delivering great products.
• Demonstrated experience in setting a product strategy, roadmap and in meeting product revenue targets.
• Excellent listening and execution skills.
• Background and drug screen.
• In-depth understanding of Salesforce capabilities (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Agentforce, etc.) and a working knowledge of Salesforce customization, automation, and integration.
• Previous experience working with financial services and alternative data in risk model building.
• Background and familiarity with API ecosystem (REST, JSON, XML, Swagger, YAML).
• 5 or more years of related work experience in Analytics, model building or data engineering.
• Demonstrated experience in building a product strategy and roadmap for API offerings.
• Understanding Open API specs.
• Demonstrated experience in setting a product strategy, roadmap and in meeting product revenue targets for API products.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree.
• Certifications in design thinking and/or agile.
• Prior experience working in payments, financial services or similar regulated industry.
• People management experience.
• Prior experience with building (rather than using) APIs in the PM role.
• Non-product background in engineering, architecture, software solutions with the focus on APIs.

Responsibilities

• Builds the right cross-functional team to obtain a common understanding of customer pain points, empathy and excitement for solving customer issues and driving product revenue.
• Articulates product strategy and vision across the enterprise across multiple products.
• Brings the customer viewpoint to the product design process with a demonstrated competency to actively listen to customer feedback across all touchpoints and channels; to routinely leverage this feedback into insights; and to build products and services that delight and inspire.
• Works closely with marketing, research, analytics, design and development partners, uses technical savvy and customer insights to develop real-world solutions working in a highly collaborative environment.
• Uses insights about the market and industry to drive development of value-added solutions for customers.
• Oversees the integration of strong risk and security controls.
• Ensures compliance to laws and regulations.
• Able and adept at working directly with the technologists to deliver market solutions.
• Clearly defines requirements, grooms user stories, motivates technical teams and partners with technology closely.
• Define the product vision and roadmap for in-app payments across native Android and iOS apps, aligning with business, growth, and risk objectives.
• Identify user pain points and optimization opportunities throughout the mobile checkout funnel (e.g., cart to conversion).
• Own the product backlog for mobile payment flows, card-on-file management, and recurring payment enablement.
• Collaborate with UX, analytics, and engineering to build frictionless payment experiences, including saved cards, autofill, biometric authentication, and instant retry on failure.
• Balance conversion vs. security trade-offs when enabling SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) and risk-based authentication methods.
• Define API requirements and integration logic with backend payment services, token vaults, and PSPs (payment service providers).
• Partner with engineering to manage feature rollout, latency performance, and mobile SDK/API documentation.
• Work with third-party PSPs, card networks, and fraud tools to integrate new capabilities (e.g., Google Pay, Apple Pay, BNPL, Pay by Bank).
• Ensure global compliance with regional mandates (e.g., PSD2, RBI tokenization, 3DS2, PCI DSS) in the payment experience.
• Define and track metrics like authorization rates, drop-off points, transaction success/failure, retries, chargebacks, and fraud.
• Own the roadmap for our internal analytics capabilities, partnering with data teams to ensure reliable event tracking, user segmentation, and behavioral insights.
• Define and standardize north star metrics, funnel KPIs, and lifecycle analytics for digital products.
• Drive adoption of self-service analytics tools and dashboards for product and design teams.
• Build and scale a structured experimentation program across teams — including test planning, success metrics, statistical confidence, and rollout logic.
• Evaluate and prioritize A/B test ideas based on user impact and confidence level; ensure learning is captured, shared, and reused.
• Collaborate with engineering and data science to implement robust testing infrastructure (e.g., feature flagging, traffic split logic, metrics pipelines).
• Establish a user research practice to bring continuous, qualitative insights into the product development cycle.
• Partner with designers, PMs, and researchers to conduct interviews, usability tests, concept validation, and diary studies.
• Integrate UX research with behavioral analytics to create a holistic view of user experience and journey friction.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to product leaders, helping guide roadmap decisions based on insights and experimentation results.
• Collaborate with marketing, customer success, and operations teams to close the loop on customer behavior and feedback patterns.
• Champion a culture of learning, hypothesis-driven development, and customer empathy.
• Define the product vision and roadmap for fraud and authentication across Paze, aligning with business, growth, and risk objectives.
• Identify user pain points and optimization opportunities related to fraud and authentication controls (e.g., minimizing risk false positives).
• Own the product backlog for Paze fraud and authentication solutions, including 3rd party vendor integrations and partner APIs.
• Work with third-party PSPs, card networks, and fraud tools to integrate new capabilities.
• Balance conversion vs. risk trade-offs when enabling MFA (Multi factor authentication) and risk based authentication methods.
• Define and track metrics like approval rates, conversion funnels, transaction performance, and fraud.
• Collaborates with Engineering / Architecture / Integration Support teams to ensure delivery of developer-friendly APIs that are fit for purpose.
• Brings a strong point of view to good API design and develops detailed product specifications and use stories to help build APIs.
• Acts as the primary point of contact for API-related inquiries and support for internal and external stakeholders.
• Stays up to date with industry trends and emerging technologies to inform product development and strategy.
• Facilitates training and adoption of users and developers to ensure successful API adoption.

Benefits

• Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
• 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
• Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.
• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior