Vice President, Product Operations, Mastercard Processing

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Vice President, Product Operations, Mastercard Processing

Overview:
Mastercard Processing is an end to end business fueling growth across key segments including fintechs, digital disruptors, and new to payments entrants. We deliver customer value as a platform for innovation built on reliability and trust while advancing Mastercard’s Consumer Product strategy and enabling new use cases and payment flows. Current regional focus is Europe and EEMEA – with growth into other regions on the roadmap.

We are seeking a VP, Head of Product Operations to lead the Product Operations function for Issuing Processing. Reporting to the SVP, Mastercard Processing, this leader will be accountable for an end to end function supporting the Mastercard Processing Program. This spans several critical pillars (i) Strategic Partnerships; (ii) Product Compliance; (iii) Product Excellence; (iv) Data Strategy & Insights; and (v) Program & Governance Support.

Responsibilities:

Leadership & Team Development
• Lead and develop the Product Operations team. Developing and growing an inclusive team with the Mastercard Way at its core.
• Coach and elevate talent, build a high performance culture, and assess talent needs across multiple geographies.
• Build, motivate, and influence direct and cross functional teams through trust based relationships.

Cross Functional Collaboration
• Collaborate closely with cross functional partners within Mastercard Processing (marketing, legal, privacy, CX, financial), and technical teams (Bizops, Engineering, Customer Care).
• Build and maintain strong relationships across Mastercard to gain input and support for key decisions, navigating across cultures and geographies. Including but not limited to other product operations teams, the Core Data Strategy team and the Consumer Product governance.
• Operate effectively in a matrix environment with competing priorities and deliver through cross functional teams.

Key pillars of the Product Operations function
• Partnerships: Own and evolve the partnership strategy and operating framework—including contractual, commercial, risk, and operational aspects. Aa well as managing key partner relationships to ensure performance, compliance, and shared value realization.
• Data Strategy & Insights: Owning the Issuing Processing data strategy aligned with Mastercard’s enterprise data strategy and tooling. As well as defining and measuring product operational performance; turn insights into improvements in product availability, user experience, and business outcomes.
• Product Excellence: Define, build, and govern scalable operating models aligned with Mastercard’s Studio framework engaging all applicable stakholders. Supporting readiness and operational excellence for new and existing products. As well as establishing and maintaining a comprehensive product performance dashboard covering availability, scalability, resilience, and responsiveness.
• Product Compliance: Lead the design, implementation, and ongoing management of a comprehensive scheme compliance program. Interpreting and operationalizing Mastercard and Visa scheme rules, bulletins, and regulatory changes.
• Governance, Risk & Program Support: Own Business Risk Governance for Issuing Processing and support Mastercard’s broader risk frameworks. Leading preparation for Business Line Reviews, program governance forums, and ongoing executive reporting. As well as supporting end‑to‑end delivery of major program initiatives.

All About You:
• Strong communication, presentation and interpersonal skills including the ability to work across cultures and influence both senior internal and external partners.
• Exhibits tenacity, encourages healthy debate, and challenges conventional thinking. Being comfortable to operate outside the direct perimeter of the role.
• Experience in driving (cultural) change initiatives. Driving new ways of working with global, multi-cultural and remote teams, while operating in an ambiguous environment that is evolving rapidly and delivering against objectives.
• Strong experience in payments ecosystem. Knowledge of the payments value chain and key drivers within the payments industry, including emerging trends and pressures.
• Confidence to operate in a matrix environment dealing with competing objectives and comfortable to deliver through end-to-end teams not directly reporting to their team
• Possess strong intellectual curiosity with effective research skills to understand and synthesize complex topics quickly while developing actionable recommendations.
• Champion a culture of experimentation, test‑and‑learn, and data‑driven decision making.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.