Product Manager

We are recruiting an experienced Product Manager , on behalf of a client building a payment orchestration platform within an established group. The platform sits between merchants and the payment ecosystem. One integration for the merchant. Behind it, multiple providers, with each transaction routed on cost, likelihood of success and availability. The business is pre-launch. The architecture is being defined now. It is being built to PCI DSS Level 1 service provider requirements, and designed from day one for DORA — as an ICT third-party service provider to financial entities — and for the EU AI Act. The Role You own product development and delivery for the platform. Your mandate is simple to state and hard to do: define what gets built, sequence it correctly, and land the platform in production at PCI DSS Level 1. That certification is not a compliance afterthought running in parallel to the build. It is the delivery target. Every architectural and product decision either supports it or costs time the business does not have. This is a builder's role. In year one you write the specs yourself and work daily with the CTO and the engineering team. A product team grows under you once the platform is live and scaling. Scope boundary. Commercial negotiation, payment provider relationships and merchant sales sit with a separate role. You are not carrying a revenue target or a partner pipeline. You own what gets built, when it ships, and whether it passes audit. Our client is looking for a strong platform product leader. Payments is a complex domain and prior experience in it is a real advantage — but they would rather hire an excellent product mind who can get deep fast than an average one who already knows the acronyms. The domain expertise exists in house to bring you up to speed. What cannot be supplied is judgement. What You Will Own Product definition. The written specification of what the platform is and what it does. Requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, edge cases. The single source engineering builds from. The routing engine. This is the product. The rules that decide where each transaction goes, what happens when it fails, when to retry, and when additional customer authentication is worth the friction it costs. Delivery. The roadmap, the sequencing, the release plan. Dependencies identified before they bite. Scope cut when the date matters more than the feature, and defended when it does not. PCI DSS Level 1 as a delivery programme. Cardholder data environment scope defined and held. Evidence, documentation and control ownership tracked as work items, not as a scramble before the assessment. Engineering, Compliance and the external QSA working from one plan — yours. Merchant-facing product surfaces. Onboarding and verification flows, sandbox and go-live, dashboard, reporting, reconciliation, dispute handling. The API as a product. Developer experience, reference documentation, versioning policy,…