Senior Manager, Programs - Global Expansion and New Initiatives

Affirm

2d•$173,000 - $255,000•Remote

About The Position

As we scale into new products, partners, geographies, and channels, we need an exceptional leader to own the strategy of how our servicing operating model evolves globally. In this role you'll set the customer operations strategy for a portfolio of complex, cross-functional expansion programs, lead a team of program and process managers, and be accountable for adapting the servicing model to new and differentiated products across markets. In addition, you will be the leader who represents operations across international business teams providing transparency into performance and partnering across product, engineering, and operations to help drive continuous improvement in service delivery for international customers. The ideal candidate pairs strong business acumen and judgment with the ability to lead teams, shape ambiguous problem spaces into clear operating plans, and influence senior partners across the company. A deep passion for growing international businesses and working to understand the localization needs for customer experience and being able to implement with scale and efficiency will be key. This role requires deep expertise in the customer/merchant servicing space and a strong grounding in financial services. You'll own a portfolio that spans a multitude of international servicing landscapes — launching, testing and learning in operations, and scaling geo expansions, new product scaling, and new channel expansion — and you'll build the standards, methods, and team that make those programs repeatable at global scale via playbooks.

Requirements

12+ years of relevant experience, including 5+ years leading teams and/or managing other managers or senior professionals.
Experience building and scaling global customer experience operations and working in global environments across cultures and geographies.
Deep program and process management expertise (PMP and/or Lean Six Sigma Black Belt a plus), with a track record of defining methods and standards — not just applying them.
Broad, cross-disciplinary expertise and a strong understanding of how the wider organization and market operate, complemented by deep functional knowledge of customer care, fraud, and/or merchant operations (processes, systems, and key metrics).
Strong knowledge of how shared services operate; experience in services, operations, and/or sales.
Proven ability to work on unique, poorly defined problems that lack strategic direction — evaluating intangibles, applying conceptual thinking, and creating the approach and evaluation criteria.
Demonstrated ability to influence and build alignment among diverse, senior stakeholders in complex or sensitive situations.
Sound judgment to make discretionary decisions with significant latitude, balancing research, creativity, and business impact.
Self-starter with a strong sense of urgency, accountability, and results orientation, and a genuine enthusiasm for developing people and building new capabilities.

Nice To Haves

Experience delivering programs across multiple geographies or markets strongly preferred
consumer lending or financial services background strongly preferred

Responsibilities

Own the strategy and roadmap for how Customer Operations scales to support global expansion — new products, merchants/partners, geo launches, and channels — translating ambiguous, undefined business direction into structured programs and clear operating plans.
Establish and modify the team's operational objectives, policies, procedures, and work plans; define the methods, frameworks, and success criteria used to run initiatives across regions.
Lead, coach, and develop a team spanning two or more disciplines (e.g., program management and service delivery via process/continuous improvement); oversee professionals and, where applicable, other people leaders; delegate assignments and ensure effective execution.
Drive the strategy and success of large-scale, cross-area programs for operations— merchant/geo launches, automation and efficiency programs, new-product scaling — managing scope, schedule, budget, dependencies, and risk across a complex, multi-market servicing landscape.
Partner in lock step with Product, Engineering, Analytics, Risk, Training, Knowledge, and Service Delivery leads to run cross-functional discovery and scoping, coordinate planning, and oversee dependencies through the full program lifecycle.
Build alignment across mid- to senior-level leaders cross-functionally; influence outcomes in complex or sensitive situations while strengthening those relationships.
Own portfolio-level governance (working groups, weekly/monthly business reviews) to drive awareness, issue resolution, and decision-making; be accountable for decisions that affect team, program, and overall business results over a medium-term (1yr+) horizon and that can carry company-wide effects.
Own post-launch operational performance for the global international operations portfolio and set up rituals and roles to support global business teams with transparent performance and improvement plans across servicing and operations.
Serve as a recognized subject-matter expert and thought leader on the global servicing operating model; build networks and represent Customer Operations on broader, organization-wide initiatives.
Champion an analytical, data-driven culture within the team and across Product, Analytics, Engineering, and the broader business.
Develop communication and change-management plans for the portfolio, and own the processes for logging and tracking risks, issues, actions, and dependencies.
Represent the unique customer servicing needs of global customers at scale across core operations.