Senior Payments Operations Manager

The Community You Will Join: 

As Senior Payments Operations Manager for Procedures, Standards & GTM Readiness, reporting to the Director of Payment Operations, you’ll lead the development, standardization, and execution of Airbnb’s global payments procedures and standards, change management, and go-to market readiness for payments products. This is a high-impact and high-influence individual contributor role that sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and platform enablement.

The Difference You Will Make:

As Payments Operations Senior Manager for Money Movement, you will lead the operationalization of Airbnb’s payments platform, focusing on pay-ins and payouts. Your focus is to partner cross-functionally to build and implement the policies, processes, and controls that make the platform work day-to-day—creating structure, consistency, and accountability across global payment operations. Examples include third-party payouts, unpaid payouts, dormant accounts, liens, garnishments, escheatment, inbound/outbound calling and escalations, request for information from pay-partners, etc. You will also ensure that new payment capabilities are launched with the right operational coverage. Above all, this work ensures we do right by our guests and hosts, enabling seamless, transparent, and trusted payment experiences across Airbnb. This role blends operational leadership, process design, and cross-functional partnership—working closely with Payments Product, Treasury, Risk, Compliance, Finance, Partnerships, Customer Support, FP&A, and regional teams to drive clarity, stability, and scalability across Airbnb’s payments ecosystem.

A Typical Day: 

Operational Enablement & Execution

• Partner cross-functionally to operationalize core workflows for Airbnb’s payments platform—including third-party payments, unpaid payouts, blocked third-party payments, dormant accounts, liens, garnishments, and escheatment—ensuring each has clear ownership, documented processes, appropriate tooling, and reliable execution with defined performance metrics and SLAs.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Risk, Compliance, Partnerships, Treasury, Customer Support, FP&A, and regional teams to align on workflow design, tooling needs, volume projections, resource planning, and budgeting.
• Balance control and experience, ensuring operational processes meet policy, risk, and compliance requirements while minimizing friction for guests and hosts.
• Identify and implement optimization opportunities across money-movement operations, leveraging automation, AI, and data insights to improve accuracy, speed, and scalability.
• Close ownership gaps by establishing clear accountability, measurable SLAs, and consistent global execution standards.
• Develop playbooks, procedures, and escalation paths that define how payments operations are executed and governed across markets and teams.
• May eventually lead directly or indirectly a team of people to enable and execute operations.

Policies, Procedures & Standards

• Define and maintain clear policies and procedures that guide payment operations, ensuring ownership, consistency, and compliance globally.
• Embed controls into everyday work so processes meet legal and regulatory requirements without adding unnecessary friction.
• Keep policies and procedures current and simple, updating them as products, markets, or regulations evolve, and ensuring teams know how to apply them in daily operations.
• In partnership with the platform product team, define and implement operational policies, controls, and SOPs ahead of product launches to ensure readiness.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Act as the link between Product, Treasury, Compliance, Risk, Finance, Partnerships, and regional teams, turning product and policy intent into practical operations.
• Engage early in new launches and programs to ensure readiness, clear ownership, and smooth execution.
• Work with regional teams to adapt global processes to local needs while maintaining consistency and compliance.
• Align priorities across teams to remove blockers, reduce duplication, and deliver payments initiatives efficiently..

Continuous Improvement

• Monitor performance data and incidents to identify trends, friction points, and improvement opportunities across pay-in and payout operations.
• Simplify and standardize workflows to enhance efficiency, reduce manual effort, and improve accuracy and speed.
• Use automation, AI, and insights to proactively improve scalability and reliability.
• Create feedback loops that capture lessons learned from incidents and launches, feeding them into process and platform design.
• Foster a culture of operational excellence, where teams continuously refine how payments operations are delivered and measured for reliability, control, and customer impact.

Your Expertise:

• 12+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or financial services, with a focus on operations, enablement, or process management.
• Proven success in building and scaling operational payment processes across complex, cross-functional organizations.
• Deep understanding of pay-ins, payouts, operational workflows, forecasting, and exception management, including regulatory, compliance, and policy requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to translate strategy and policy into actionable, scalable operations.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills across Product, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and Operations teams.
• Analytical and structured thinker with a bias for execution and continuous improvement.
• Excellent communicator, able to simplify complex concepts and influence effectively across all levels of the organization.

Your Location:
This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb Payments, Inc. (a subsidiary of Airbnb, Inc.) is a registered entity. Approved remote states include: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is excluded. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.