Lead PayOps

Are you looking to have an impact on the daily life of millions of entrepreneurs in France (and tomorrow in Europe)? Are you looking for a work environment that values trust, proactivity, and autonomy? Then Pennylane is the right place for you ! Our vision We aim to become the most beloved financial Operating System of French SMEs and Accounting Firms (and soon, European ones). We help entrepreneurs rid themselves of time-consuming tasks related to accounting and finance while providing them with access to key financial information to assist in making the best decisions for their business. About us Pennylane is one of the fastest growing Fintechs in France (and soon to be in Europe!) In 5 years of existence, we’ve managed to : 💻 Make ourselves known as a groundbreaking accounting and financial software for small businesses and their accountants 💰 Raise a total of €400 millions, including from Sequoia, the famous fund from the Silicon Valley who invested early in companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, Paypal and much more... 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Grow from 7 cofounders to 1000 happy Pennylaners : we’re now recognized as one of the greatest places to work in France (and also remotely), with a 4.6/5 rating on Glassdoor . 🌍 Build an international environment with more than 25 nationalities, with a strong remote-friendly culture, where 30% of the employees are already working from all parts of Europe 🤝 Earn the trust of thousands of customers and accounting firms and obtain outstanding ratings 🚀 Already more than 1 300,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and over 6000 accounting firms use Pennylane in France! Role context Pennylane operates today tens of thousands of business accounts through a BaaS model. As Financial Services becomes a larger part of Pennylane’s strategy, we are building Pennylane Financial Services and applying for Établissement de paiement and Société de financement licences. Our ambition is to start onboarding new customers under our own licensed entity by early 2027, before progressively migrating existing customers. To make this possible, we are building the operational foundations of a regulated financial entity across onboarding, transaction monitoring, fraud, risk and payment operations. As Lead Payment Operations , you will be one of the first operational leaders joining this greenfield setup. Reporting to the General Manager / Head of Operations of Pennylane Financial Services, you will own the operational execution of payment operations across SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, and cash / collateral management. Your mission will be to build, structure and scale the payment operations setup needed to support growing volumes, ensure reliable execution, manage incidents, and protect customer experience while embedding the controls expected from a strong first line of defense. This is a high-autonomy role with direct exposure to a strategic regulatory project, close collaboration with Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk and external payment partners, and the opportunity to shape the payment operating model of a fast-growing fintech serving hundreds of thousands of French SMEs. Responsibilities Payment operations & execution Own the end-to-end operational execution of payment operations across: SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, cash and collateral management. Ensure day-to-day reliability of payment operations, including exception handling, operational follow-up, issue resolution, external requests. Act as the operational point of escalation for payment incidents: triage, coordination, customer impact assessment, mitigation, root cause analysis and durable corrective actions. Maintain strong auditability of operational decisions, reconciliations, exceptions and incidents. Operating model, controls & scalability Build and continuously improve the payment operations operating model: processes, SLAs, runbooks, documentation, knowledge base, onboarding and training materials. Define clear ownership, escalation paths and rituals for payment operations. Design and embed first-line controls aligned with operational risk, regulatory expectations and customer protection. Implement reconciliation, exception-management and incident-management practices proportionate to the risks of each payment rail. Prepare the function to scale from an initial team of 3 people to around 10 people while maintaining quality, resilience and operational discipline. Performance management & continuous improvement Define, monitor and report on payment operations KPIs, including: volumes, success rates, exception and error rates, incident frequency and MTTR, backlog, SLA adherence, customer-impact metrics. Use operational data to identify bottlenecks, recurring issues and high-leverage improvement opportunities. Drive continuous improvement cycles to reduce manual work, shorten resolution times and improve reliability. Build the reporting cadence needed to keep internal stakeholders aligned on performance, risks and priorities. Tooling, automation & Product collaboration Partner closely with Product and Tech teams to shape payment back-office tooling and operational workflows. Translate operational pain points into clear product requirements, acceptance criteria and post-launch monitoring needs. Contribute to operational testing before go-live, beyond technical QA: runbooks, edge cases, incident scenarios, reconciliation and handover processes. Identify and prioritize automation opportunities that improve efficiency, quality and customer experience. Balance automation and manual controls pragmatically during the first scaling phase. Incident management & customer protection Build a structured incident-management framework for payment operations: severity levels, ownership, communication rhythm, escalation paths, root cause analysis, prevention actions. Coordinate with Customer Support, Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk and external partners during operational incidents. Ensure customer-facing issues such as blocked payments, missing transactions, failed transfers or delayed resolutions are handled with urgency and clarity. Use post-mortems and operational learnings to prevent recurrence and improve customer transparency. External stakeholder management Build and maintain strong operational relationships with payment processing providers, partner banks and other external stakeholders. Define escalation routines and performance expectations with external partners. Keep providers accountable using facts, metrics and structured follow-up. Ensure third-party dependencies are well understood, monitored and integrated into Pennylane Financial Services’ operating model. Team build-up & leadership Recruit, onboard, train and manage the payment operations team. Operate as a player/coach: remain hands-on on critical topics while progressively building team capacity and autonomy. Define roles, responsibilities, workload distribution and coverage model. Build a team culture based on ownership, rigor, customer protection, operational excellence and continuous learning. Develop the team’s skills across payment operations, incident management, controls and stakeholder management. First 6–12 months priorities Map current and target payment operations processes across payment rails and identify operational gaps. Define the target operating model, including rituals, SLAs, controls, escalation paths and reporting. Build the first version of payment operations runbooks, incident procedures and reconciliation framework. Set up operational KPIs and reporting routines. Contribute to the design, testing and launch readiness of payment back-office tooling. Recruit and onboard the first team members while maintaining hands-on ownership of critical operations. Build escalation routines with banks, payment processors and internal stakeholders. Improve customer experience by reducing resolution time, increasing transparency and eliminating recurring operational pain points. Profile & must-have experience Experience 5+ years of experience in payments operations, financial operations, treasury operations or operational risk in a regulated or high-volume environment. Strong exposure to payment operations across at least part of the scope: SEPA transfers and direct debits, cards, international transfers, cheques, cash management or related payment rails. Proven experience managing operational incidents, including triage, escalation, root cause analysis and prevention. Experience designing scalable operational processes, SLAs, runbooks and controls. Experience working with Product and Tech teams on tooling, workflow improvements or automation. Experience managing or coordinating operational teams, ideally in a player/coach setup. Experience managing external operational stakeholders such as banks, PSPs, payment processors or other financial partners. Bonus: experience in a regulated fintech, payment institution, EMI, bank, BaaS / embedded finance provider, or with a payment-institution licence setup. Technical & operational skills Strong understanding of payment flows, operational failure modes, exceptions and controls. Good knowledge of first-line-of-defense expectations: operational risk ownership, reconciliations, auditability, exception handling and incident management. Strong process mindset: able to structure workflows, clarify ownership and improve quality at scale. Data-driven approach: comfortable defining KPIs, building operational reporting and using metrics to prioritize improvements. Ability to translate operational pain points into clear Product / Tech requirements. Good judgment in balancing reliability, customer experience, operational efficiency and risk control. Ability to design pragmatic automation and tooling improvements without losing operational control. Soft skills Rigorous, structured and accountable. Strong ownership mindset and ability to prioritize in an ambiguous, fast-scaling environment. Player/coach leadership: comfortable being hands-on while building a team and operating cadence. Excellent communication under pressure, especially during incidents or partner escalations. Strong cross-functional collaboration with Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk, Customer Support and external partners. Customer-conscious: attentive to payment reliability, resolution time and customer impact. Pragmatic and solution-oriented, able to operate under regulatory constraints without creating unnecessary friction. Strong pedagogy: able to explain operational constraints and trade-offs in simple, actionable terms. Languages, Presence & Location Languages: Fluent French and English are mandatory. Location: Based in France, with a strong preference for Paris. Regular on-site presence in Paris is expected; partial remote is possible, but this is not a fully remote role. Why Join Us? Greenfield regulatory project: help build the payment operations foundations of a new regulated financial entity from scratch. Massive impact: shape how financial services are delivered to hundreds of thousands of French SMEs. High autonomy: own a critical operational domain with direct impact on reliability, customer experience and go-live readiness. Strategic exposure: work closely with Operations, Product, Tech, Compliance, Risk and external payment partners on a company-defining project. Modern fintech environment: help design scalable, automated and risk-conscious payment operations from day one. Competitive compensation package , including equity components aligned with impact and responsibility. Hiring process HR interview with Lucie (Senior Recruiter) Who interview Stanislas de Villoutreys (Head of Legal, Compliance and Risk) and Maxime Leclercq (General Manager Financial Services) Case Stanislas and Eric Scaramozzino (VP Strategic Initiatives) Team Fit with Tiffany Dubois (Strategic Project Manager) and Hippolyte Prost (Associate Team Le