Program Lead, Payments

Blend is a premier AI services provider, committed to co-creating meaningful impact for its clients through the power of data science, AI, technology, and people. With a mission to fuel bold visions, Blend tackles significant challenges by seamlessly aligning human expertise with artificial intelligence. The company is dedicated to unlocking value and fostering innovation for its clients by harnessing world-class people and data-driven strategy. We believe that the power of people and AI can have a meaningful impact on your world, creating more fulfilling work and projects for our people and clients. For more information, visit www.blend360.com 

We are seeking a Program Coordination Lead to provide program-level oversight, risk transparency, and executive-ready reporting for a time-sensitive payments implementation.

This role operates across multiple internal teams and external ecosystem partners, ensuring clarity, alignment, and proactive risk management while preserving existing project management ownership and client decision rights.

The ideal candidate brings deep contextual knowledge of card payments delivery models and can quickly establish operating rhythm, visibility, and accountability in a fast-moving, matrixed environment.

Program Coordination & Alignment

• Act as the central coordination point across internal stakeholders and external partners, ensuring streamlined communication and consolidated status visibility.

• Integrate updates from parallel workstreams into clear, consistent, and outcome-oriented program reporting.

• Maintain a holistic view of program health, identifying interdependencies, sequencing impacts, and critical path risks.

Risk Management & Escalation

• Proactively identify risks, blockers, and external dependency impacts before they escalate.

• Drive mitigation strategies in partnership with workstream owners.

• Ensure issues are clearly articulated, appropriately escalated, and resolved with a focus on delivery outcomes.

Client Advocacy & Executive Engagement

• Represent client priorities, constraints, and timeline commitments across all internal and partner discussions.

• Translate complex, multi-party delivery updates into concise, executive-ready status reports.

• Provide clear visibility into status, risks, dependencies, and next steps.

Operating Model & Delivery Support

• Establish program operating cadence within days of engagement.

• Coordinate around North America-specific requirements and regulatory timelines.

• Minimize cross-region friction and time-zone related delays.

• Work closely with the existing Project Manager while maintaining clear role boundaries and preserving PM execution ownership.

• Reinforce accountability without assuming task-level direction or execution control.

Industry Knowledge & Experience

This role requires strong ecosystem knowledge rather than hands-on configuration expertise.

• Working knowledge of the card payments ecosystem, including networks, issuers, processors, and certification dependencies.

• Experience supporting issuer-led card program implementations with shared accountability across multiple parties.

• Understanding of certifications, endpoint readiness, production readiness gates, and their impact on critical path delivery.

• Ability to recognize external dependency risks even when not directly managing technical execution.

• Experience working within global, matrixed organizations and influencing outcomes through structured escalation and alignment.

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years of experience in payments, card programs, or financial services implementations.

• Proven experience coordinating network–issuer–processor delivery models.

• Demonstrated success operating at program or portfolio level under tight regulatory or market deadlines.

• Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills.

• Ability to quickly assess program maturity and implement structured operating rhythm.

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship.

A diverse workforce is a strong workforce 

To deliver growth at BLEND360 and for our clients, we believe we have a responsibility and unique opportunity to positively impact the workforce. Diversity has played a critical role in our history, our growth, and continues to have a profound impact on our success.  We are determined to have equality in the workplace, within our team and as an extension of our clients’ team.  

 

This is not the work of the moment, and this requires continued learning and purposeful actions.  We are investing resources to understand and improve the sourcing, selection, and retention of the talent we hire, and ultimately the workforce we provide for our clients. We will communicate our journey in the spirit of transparency and shared learning.