Senior Lead Product Manager, Risk Decisioning Platform

PayPal • San Jose, CA

2d • $196,500 - $333,500 • Hybrid

About The Position

PayPal is seeking a Senior Lead Product Manager to set product direction for a risk domain spanning a portfolio of strategies and multiple strategy leaders. In partnership with risk strategy leaders, this role defines the domain vision and multi-year strategy, determines investment priorities, and translates business outcomes such as loss reduction, approval rates, and customer experience into product plans. The role will help shape PayPal’s next-generation Risk Decisioning Platform.

Near-term priorities include migrating strategies from legacy systems and ramping them to full production. Longer-term work includes launching new strategies and using experimentation and automation to continuously optimize results. The Senior Lead Product Manager leads cross-functional pods, tracks captured savings with business partners, represents the domain to executives, and mentors other product managers. Success requires deep risk-domain expertise, technical fluency, and executive presence.

The role drives product strategy with cross-functional stakeholders and plans architectural roadmaps that balance innovation, technical implementation, regulatory requirements, time-to-market, customer needs, and profitability. It evaluates customer experience and needs, establishes mechanisms to gather product-success metrics, and leads analytics, customer discovery, market research, and competitive analysis. It also oversees product profitability measures, including budget, and establishes operating mechanisms such as Product Reviews, Operating Reviews, and Business Reviews. The role partners with content strategists, data scientists, designers, and user experience researchers in a fluid, evolving environment.

The position is offered in a balanced hybrid work model for most employees: three days in the office and two days at either a PayPal office or home workspace. Travel is listed as 0%.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of relevant experience and a bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Significant experience building products in fraud, account integrity, credit, or other risk domains in close partnership with risk strategy leaders.
• Track record of setting a multi-year product vision and strategy for a business domain while balancing near-term delivery with longer-term investments.
• Experience leading product for a multi-team risk portfolio alongside business owners and reporting outcomes to executive stakeholders.
• Deep knowledge of risk decisioning and tuning, including rules, machine-learning models, features, step-up treatments, friction treatments, and the tradeoff between loss and customer experience.
• Strong quantitative skills, including defining and interpreting loss, catch, false-positive, and approval-rate metrics; prioritizing opportunities across a portfolio; and connecting product changes to business impact.
• Experience launching through controlled rollouts and experimentation, including champion/challenger tests and staged traffic ramps.
• Experience shaping platform roadmaps from the business side, translating domain needs into priorities for data science, modeling, and platform teams, and resolving competing demands.
• Experience leading major platform transitions, such as migrating risk strategies off legacy systems while protecting performance.
• Experience mentoring product managers and establishing repeatable product practices.
• Ability to influence executive stakeholders and drive milestone-based delivery across many teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive product strategy with cross-functional stakeholders, aligned with the shared product or platform vision.
• Set the risk domain’s vision and multi-year strategy with risk strategy leaders, determining investment priorities and translating business outcomes into product plans.
• Plan and implement architectural roadmaps that balance innovation, technical implementation, regulatory requirements, time-to-market, customer needs, and profitability.
• Assess customer experience and needs in product requirements and decision-making.
• Establish data-gathering mechanisms and metrics to evaluate product success, including usability studies, research, and market analysis.
• Lead analytics, customer discovery, market research, and competitive analysis workstreams to support data-driven decisions.
• Oversee product profitability measures, including budget.
• Establish operational mechanisms that drive execution and accountability, including Product Reviews, Operating Reviews, and Business Reviews; interface with product and technology leadership as needed.
• Partner with content strategists, data scientists, product designers, and user experience researchers.
• Lead cross-functional pods and coordinate product work across a multi-team risk portfolio.
• Migrate risk strategies from legacy systems and ramp them to full production while protecting performance.
• Launch new strategies and optimize them through experimentation and automation, including controlled rollouts and staged traffic ramps.
• Track captured savings with business partners and report outcomes to executive stakeholders.
• Represent the risk domain to executives and drive milestone-based delivery across teams.
• Mentor product managers and establish repeatable product practices.
• Maximize efficiency and develop creative solutions in a constantly evolving environment.

Benefits

• Generous paid time off.
• Healthcare coverage for the employee and family.
• Resources to support financial security and mental health.
• An annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation may be available, as applicable.

What This Job Offers

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