Senior Payments Ops Specialist

Shift

Who is Shift? At Shift, we’re business specialists dedicated to helping Australian SMEs take control of their cashflow, streamline trade terms and choose the right financial products. We believe Australian businesses are the driving force behind our economy and are core to our communities. That’s why our business expertise, focus on relationships, and market-leading technology is at the core of everything we do. We’ve helped solve the credit and payment pain points for more than 30,000 businesses, providing over $6 billion in aggregate funding. Our unique approach to product innovation combined with our collaborative culture means you can build your career in a supportive environment. You’ll be joining a diverse team of over 300 people who are always looking to deliver better outcomes for Australian businesses. About the role: We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to take ownership of key products within Shift's portfolio - driving strategy, commercial performance and ongoing development across the full product lifecycle. This is a role for someone who thrives in a complex, regulated environment and brings genuine commercial instinct to every decision. You'll work closely with Sales, Credit, Risk, Tech, Design and Leadership to ensure our products perform well, scale sustainably and continue to deliver real value to customers. If you're someone who stays close to how a product performs commercially and brings a point of view on what to do about it - we'd love to hear from you! What you'll do: * Own and drive the product roadmap, ensuring initiatives align with Shift's growth strategy and commercial objectives * Take accountability for product performance across financial, operational and customer metrics * Lead discovery end-to-end - from understanding the problem space through to landing on a commercially grounded approach * Apply commercial judgement to product decisions, including how pricing, inserts and policy changes influence product economics * Identify opportunities to optimise pricing, processes, eligibility, segmentation and lifecycle performance * Collaborate with Risk, Compliance and Operations to deliver scalable, compliant and efficient products * Work with Design and Tech to create solutions that drive product adoption and customer retention * Partner with Sales and divisional leaders to align product capabilities with market needs * Keep product documentation, workflows and policy definitions accurate and up to date across systems and teams * Lead strategic portfolio planning, including investment prioritisation and commercial modelling * Monitor and manage product risks, serving as an escalation point when needed What you'll bring: * 7+ years in product management within financial services, fintech, lending or payments * Experience working in a highly regulated environment, with a solid understanding of how risk, compliance and commercial considerations shape product decisions * Strong commercial acumen, including unit economics, pricing decisions and an understanding of how product choices influence the P&L * A proven ability to lead discovery that lands on decisions, not just insights * Experience with credit policy, risk frameworks and compliance requirements * A track record of owning product performance end-to-end and driving improvement from data * Strong stakeholder management skills across cross-functional teams including Sales, Credit, Ops, Tech and Legal * High attention to detail across documentation, process and decision-making * A bias for outcomes, continuous improvement and getting to the root of a problem Key benefits: * Collaborative teams – a flat structure means everyone can learn from colleagues and senior leaders around the business. * Be involved – come together with all of your colleagues every 100 days to share the product and technology roadmap and business strategy. * Flexible working environment – we’re headquartered in North Sydney with state-based workplaces and offer a flexible work policy. * Family support – industry leading 26 weeks paid parental leave. * Purpose built spaces within our office – designed for collaboration, brainstorming, socialising, and focused work. * Range of benefits supporting your physical, psychological and financial wellbeing. From a day off on your birthday to excellent end of trip facilities. #LI-Hybrid

Financial Times

ABOUT US The Financial Times (FT) is one of the world’s leading business news and information organisations. We are recognised globally for our authority, integrity, and accuracy. We provide a broad range of essential services, including news, comment, data, and analysis, to a growing audience of internationally minded business people. Here at the FT, gold-standard journalism is just the beginning. Our 500-people-strong Product & Tech team keeps us ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape by delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers every day. Our plans for growth rely on a diverse, dedicated, and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery, and data specialists – everyone’s welcome in this friendly, forward-thinking team. STORYFINDING TEAM The Storyfinding team sits at the heart of innovation between the FT’s newsroom and technology. We collaborate closely with the Computational Journalism team to uncover and scale new ways of finding stories hidden in complex or unstructured data. Our mission is to turn bespoke investigations into reusable tools and data products that empower more journalists to tell stories that otherwise would be untold. This is where engineering meets journalism — you can see the direct impact of your work on the FT’s homepage. Since the team was formed, Storyfinding has helped uncover more than 10 exclusive stories, including Europe builds for war as arms factories expand at triple speed and Prices for used Teslas drop in US and Britain. We are a cross-functional team of Software Engineers, Data Engineers, ML Ops Engineers, and Product Managers. We balance strong engineering practices with the fast-moving needs of the newsroom, delivering quickly while keeping our systems reliable, secure, and easy to evolve. ABOUT THE ROLE OVERVIEW We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer 1 to play a key role in designing, building, and operating the backend systems and services that power Storyfinding’s investigative and editorial work. This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role with a primary focus on backend software engineering. You will be responsible for designing and building robust backend systems and services, while also maintaining that data engineering is a key component of the work. You will contribute to and maintain critical data pipelines and data products, helping to establish patterns and standards that enable the team to scale its impact. WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON Some example projects include: * Designing and operating data pipelines that ingest, clean, enrich, and model complex datasets for investigative reporting. * Building resilient, observable data workflows to support high-traffic and time-critical newsroom events such as elections or major economic announcements. * Developing shared data infrastructure and tooling that turns one-off investigations into reusable capabilities for the wider newsroom. * Working with unstructured and semi-structured data sources (documents, filings, scraped content, APIs) to create high-quality, queryable datasets. * Collaborating with journalists, product managers, and engineers to translate editorial questions into scalable data solutions. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES * Design, build, and maintain scalable and resilient backend services, APIs, and infrastructure. * Ensure high standards of software quality through testing, documentation, observability, and security across all systems. * Design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable data pipelines and datasets in a cloud environment. * Work across OLTP and OLAP data stores to support both application-driven and analytical use cases. * Partner closely with journalists and other technical colleagues to shape data solutions that directly support storytelling. * Lead by example in engineering best practices, including code review, documentation, and pragmatic architectural decision-making. * Support and mentor more junior engineers through pairing, feedback, and knowledge sharing. * Identify areas where AI and new technologies can help in the newsroom and be able to propose ideas. * Actively participate in the process of requirements gathering and have the desire to have regular catch-ups with editors and journalists if that’s needed. ABOUT YOU We’re looking for someone curious, pragmatic, and motivated by impact. You enjoy working with messy real-world data, care deeply about reliability and clarity, and are comfortable operating in an environment where priorities can shift quickly around editorial deadlines. ESSENTIAL SKILLS * Strong experience as a backend engineer designing and building production-grade distributed systems and APIs in a cloud environment. * Excellent Python skills for developing backend services, system integration, and data processing. * Solid experience as a data engineer with a vital skill set in maintaining production data pipelines and using workflow orchestration tools like Apache Airflow. * Experience working with cloud platforms, particularly AWS. * Familiarity with modern engineering practices including version control, CI/CD, and automated testing. * The ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. * Interest in exploring new technologies and approaches related to AI and Agentic AI. * An interest in journalism, investigations, or using data to answer real-world questions. * Data Science (DS) experience or education is highly valuable for this role, as we leverage AI heavily for many of our use cases. DESIRABLE SKILLS * Strong SQL skills and experience designing and working with relational and analytical databases. * Experience with databases such as BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL, SingleStore, or MongoDB. * Experience working with unstructured or semi-structured data at scale. * A solid understanding of data modelling, data architecture, and trade-offs between different storage and processing approaches. * Comfort contributing to backend software engineering tasks beyond pure data pipelines. * Exposure to building internal tools or lightweight user-facing applications. * Experience with building simple user interfaces or/and the desire to do so (e.g., using frameworks like Streamlit). CHARACTERISTICS WE VALUE * Inquisitive and analytical, with strong problem-solving skills. * Pragmatic and delivery-focused, able to balance technical quality with newsroom deadlines. * Collaborative and generous with your knowledge. * Comfortable working with ambiguity and evolving requirements. * A systems-level thinker who can see how individual pipelines and tools fit into a broader platform. * Motivated by learning and continuous improvement. * A collaborative team member who thrives in cross-functional environments and values collective success. OUR TECHNOLOGY We don’t expect you to be an expert in everything. Our current stack includes: * Languages: Python, SQL * Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS * Data Pipelines & Orchestration: Apache Airflow, AWS ECS * Databases: BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL, SingleStore, MongoDB * Version Control & CI/CD: GitHub, CircleCI * Frontend (small part of the role): Streamlit This is a unique opportunity to use your technical skills to contribute to data journalism. You’ll be making content for the FT’s readership, using data to make news accessible, understandable, and impactful. If this sounds like a role that aligns with your expertise and ambitions, we’d love to hear from you!   IN RETURN, WE CAN OFFER YOU * Annual bonus scheme * 25 days paid leave * 24/7 Employee Assistance Program * Life Insurance * Enhanced Parental Leave policy * Food Allowance * Multisport Card * Both in house and external training programs * Your own training dedicated budget (for conferences, courses etc.)   We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning.  We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams.    Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion  We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.   Accessibility We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory. Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email talent@ft.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.   Further information At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications. Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all. Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact talent@ft.com.  Interested in the FT but don’t see the right role yet? Join our Talent Community to receive exclusive updates, featured jobs, and insights into working at the FT. #LI-MG1

iBanFirst

WHO ARE WE? iBanFirst is a fast-growing European fintech that is revolutionizing international payments for SMEs. Founded in 2016, our platform empowers Small & Medium Multinationals (SMMs) to regain control over their payment operations: currency conversion (FX), international transactions, and foreign exchange risk management across 140 countries — quickly, transparently, and securely. We make life easier for SMEs through an advanced technology platform (automation, APIs, AI…) combined with dedicated expertise, offering the best of both worlds: the agility of a SaaS solution and the reliability of a trusted partner.  By simplifying complexity, iBanFirst helps thousands of bold companies seize global business opportunities with peace of mind — delivering simplicity, transparency, and security.    KEY FIGURES  * 350+ employees across 15 offices in 12 European countries * 30+ nationalities represented, average age: 32 * 10,000 corporate clients trust us * €80M in revenue in 2025, with a target of around €100M in 2026 * Profitable for more than two years * Ranked for 6 consecutive years in the Financial Times FT1000, among the fastest-growing European companies * An NPS of 87.5 — an exceptional score in our industry that reflects enthusiastic client feedback on the simplicity, speed, and quality of our service   A STRONG CULTURE BUILT AROUND 4 CORE VALUES  * Team First : The complexity of our industry demands collective intelligence. We prioritize cooperation, transparency, and knowledge sharing. Success is a team effort, and decisions are made together. * Tenacity : We’re transforming a challenging and highly regulated market. It requires endurance, fast learning, and resilience — qualities rooted in our entrepreneurial DNA. * Transformation : Innovation is not a buzzword; it’s a necessity in a constantly shifting and strategic sector. We innovate with intent: every technical, product, or organizational improvement is designed for real impact. * Trust : Trust is the foundation of everything we build — with our clients and, above all, internally. It’s driven by ownership, autonomy, and a shared commitment to transparency, rigor, and reliability.   WHY JOIN US?  * We operate at the heart of a strategic and fast-evolving sector: international payments for SMEs — a complex, high-potential market. * We’re driven by a meaningful mission: helping bold “Small & Medium Multinationals” succeed globally. * Our platform integrates cutting-edge technologies (AI, automation…), making it an ideal playground to test, learn, and innovate continuously. * You’ll join an agile environment where your expertise has tangible impact, working alongside talent from top financial institutions. * iBanFirst is profitable and backed by long-term investors: * Xavier Niel and Bpifrance, historical shareholders, have supported and trusted us from the beginning * In 2021, the entry of Marlin Equity Partners marked a new chapter in our international ambitions Joining iBanFirst means joining a profitable, international, fast-growing tech company. It’s also a chance to learn, grow, and contribute directly to a shared ambition: simplifying international finance for SMEs.      THE ROLE  RECRUITMENT CONTEXT  This is a newly created position driven by iBanFirst's continued growth and the increasing complexity of our financial crime risk environment. As transaction volumes scale across new markets and products, we need a dedicated manager to lead our first line of defense teams on Financial Crime (Transaction Monitoring, Fraud detection, Regulatory Ops) and structure the quality and operational controls that underpin them.  We are open to candidates coming from various backgrounds (management/strategy consulting, operations/compliance professionals) who are looking to step into a thigh impact operational role. The financial crime domain can be learned — we are hiring for how you think, how you build, how you leverage technology (analytics, AI) and how you lead.    MANAGER & TEAM  You will report directly to Julien Molez, Chief Operations Officer. You will manage three teams which are at different levels of maturity:a team of 5 people: a  Transaction Monitoring Fraud management and Regulatory Operations. Your team is the first line of defense against money laundering, fraud, and financial crime — operating at the intersection of operational rigor, regulatory compliance, and technology.    WHAT WILL YOU DO?  As iBanFirst expands across European markets, the financial crime risk landscape grows in complexity. We are looking for an analytically sharp, structured, and operationally driven leader to supervise our TM Financial Crime Operations function, steer it with rigor and precision, embed it in a robust and recognized quality framework, and drive highest level of efficiency through data and automation.  Team Management & Operations  * Lead and develop the different teams in the scope: set priorities, manage performance, and build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.  * Oversee their daily operations: alert review, case investigation, SAR filing, and escalation processes.  * Manage capacity and workload allocation to maintain SLAs and maintain backlogs at constant low levels.  Fraud & Financial Crime  * Own the fraud detection and prevention framework: typologies, detection rules, investigation workflows, and outcomes tracking  * Stay current on financial crime trends and adapt the team's detection approach accordingly  Controls & Quality Framework  * Design and implement a quality insurance framework for each team, specific to each of them but consistent across domains.  * Define and track KPIs: detection rates, false positive ratios, case resolution times, SAR quality.  * Conduct regular calibration sessions and quality reviews to maintain consistent, high standards across the teams.  Analytics & Automation  * Use data to assess the performance of each value chains. For example, on the transaction monitoring side : rules effectiveness, reduce noise, and improve alert prioritization  * Work with Product and Engineering teams to constantly improve underlying systems and integrate automation into workflows  * Identify opportunities to leverage AI and machine learning to enhance detection and reduce manual effort  Regulatory & Reporting  * Ensure compliance with Belgian and EU AML/CFT obligations (LCB-FT, EU AML directives)  * Produce clear, insight-driven reporting for senior leadership: what the data says, what it means, and what action it warrants  * Lead or support regulatory audits and inspections related to TM and fraud  * Be the key go-to person for C-Levels for these topics and lead the associated governance meetings.    TASK BREAKDOWN  40% — Team management & operational oversight: Day-to-day leadership of the different teams, alert review quality, escalation management, and capacity planning  20% — Framework building: Quality controls, KPIs, fraud typologies, policies and procedures  30% — Analytics & automation: Rule performance analysis, detection improvement, collaboration with Product/Engineering  10% — Reporting & regulatory: Senior management reporting, audit support    ROLE OBJECTIVES  First 3 months  * Ramp up on iBanFirst's transaction monitoring systems, financial crime risk exposure, and regulatory environment  * Build trust with the team and assess individual strengths and development needs  * Map existing processes and identify the top 3 priority areas for improvement  First 6 months  * Deliver the first version of the quality assurance framework  * Define and baseline key operational KPIs  * Launch at least one automation or efficiency initiative  First 12 months  * Own the fraud framework end-to-end and present it to senior leadership  * Demonstrate measurable improvement in alert quality, team efficiency, or detection rates  * Build a 12-month roadmap for the function aligned with iBanFirst's growth plans    WHAT DO YOU BRING?  EXPERIENCE:  * 5-10 years of experience in similar positions at recognized financial institutions or in management consulting, strategy consulting, or a similar structured analytical environment (Big 4, MBB, Tier 2 strategy firms)  * Experience in financial services, fintech, or a regulated industry project context is a strong plus  * First exposure to compliance, risk, or financial crime topics (through client work, due diligence, or regulatory projects) is valued   SKILLS:  * Natural leadership and recognized management experience  * Exceptional structuring and problem-solving skills: you break complex issues into clear frameworks and actionable plans  * Strong data and analytics capabilities: comfortable with quantitative analysis, building dashboards, and deriving insights from operational data  * Proven ability to design processes and quality frameworks from scratch  * Natural project management instincts: you sequence work, track delivery, and hold people accountable  * High proficiency on AI and automation concepts and enthusiasm to apply them in an operational context  * Fluent in French and English, confident communicating with senior stakeholders  NICE TO HAVE:  * Hands-on experience with a transaction monitoring platform (ComplyAdvantage, Actimize, Napier, or equivalent)  * Familiarity with the French or Belgian regulatory environment: NBB, CTIF, ACPR, Tracfin, LCB-FT  WHAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT:  * You have led a transformation or process redesign project end-to-end  * You are energized by the idea of owning something operational, not just advising on it and transforming and optimizing it with technology  * You are curious about financial crime and see it as a high-stakes, intellectually demanding domain    WHAT DO WE OFFER? * Permanent contract (CDI)  * Office location: Paris  * Hybrid work policy: 2 days remote per week  * Competitive salary: €75,000 – €110,000 gross annual, depending on experience  * Benefits: * Swile meal card * Axa health insurance * Commuter benefits * RTT (extra paid days off) * Gymlib subsciption * Paid parental leave * Participate in company-wide events, including team offsites, company parties, and regular social activities.   RECRUITMENT PROCESS  1. Screening call with Malorie Petitjean (Talent Acquisition Specialist)— 30 min, remote. General fit, motivation, salary expectations, availability. 2. In-depth interview with Julien Molez (COO)— 1 hour, in-person. Operational experience, leadership approach, team fit.  3. Case study— Take-home exercise on an operational design or process improvement scenario. Presented during complementary 1h session with COO.  4. Final interview with Sonia Boudier (Deputy CEO) — 45 min, in-person. Leadership validation, strategic vision, long-term fit.          ____________________________ #LI-MP1 #LI-onsite / #LI-hybrid / #LI-remote