Payments Optimization Product Manager

Payments Optimization Product Manager

PLEASE NOTE THIS ROLE IS FOR OVERSEAS APPLICATION, NON -U.S. ONLY. NO DOMESTIC (U.S.) APPLICATIONS WILL BE CONSIDERED.

The Payments Optimization Manager is both the subscription and payments platform lead and the operator who is responsible for optimizing that platform. This is an analysis-led, hands-on role. You will own platform migrations, retry and dunning strategy, decline and authorization rate performance, gateway routing and failover, chargeback systems, and the revenue we recover from involuntary churn. You find the problem in the data, hypothesize changes, and write the requirements for engineering to execute. Our payments and billing platform is evolving, and you will be the internal voice defining what it has to do. This role requires real payments and subscription depth, strong analytical ability, and the judgment to know which decline pattern is worth chasing and which is noise.

What You’ll Be Responsible For:

• Own retry and dunning strategy end to end, including retry cadence, the recovery lifecycle, hard versus soft decline handling, and the full failed-payment cycle, across the Scentbird family of businesses.  
• Own decline and authorization rate performance at the processor, gateway, region, and BIN level, and convert what you find into routing, retry, or fraud rule changes.
• Create rock solid processes for execution which maximize safety but enables rapid change, logging, analysis, and management. 
• Run the payments operating cadence: failed-payment queues, decline and authorization rate monitoring, and gateway health. You are the first responder when payment performance degrades.
• Own the recovery metric set and the baselines we manage against: dunning recovery rate, authorization rate, chargeback rate, and payment cost as a percentage of processed volume.
• Own the authorization rate levers, including account updater and network token coverage, retry timing, and extending failover coverage to customer-initiated transactions rather than background renewals alone.
• Partner with Financial Systems, CX, CRM, and Retention so dunning messaging works through our lifecycle channels and billing waves align with fulfillment and CX capacity.
• Report payment performance on a regular cadence to Product, Finance, and leadership: what you changed, what it moved, and what you are going after next.

What You’ll Need to Have: 

• 7+ years in payments, billing, or subscription operations at a recurring revenue business, with direct ownership of dunning, retry, or authorization rate outcomes. 
• Real domain fluency: decline codes and issuer behavior, BIN-level analysis, MIT versus CIT and stored credential mandates, exemption handling, network tokens and account updater, interchange, and the chargeback lifecycle.
• Hands-on configuration experience in a subscription billing platform and in a gateway or PSP
• Comfort in a BI tools, generating the reporting you need to uncover the gems and the problems. You build your own analysis and form your own view of where the money is leaking.
• The ability to write requirements an engineer can build from, including success metrics and acceptance criteria, and to defend the prioritization behind them.
• Measurement rigor. You know how to prove a retry or routing change worked, and how to tell the difference between a real lift and seasonality, mix shift, or a good month.
• Multi-brand, multi-currency, and multi-country exposure.
• AI-Augmented Working Style: We don't just "use" AI; it is increasingly integrated into our workflow. You should be proficient at using AI agents and LLMs for synthesis, pattern discovery, red teaming, and automation of rote tasks, with the judgment to keep cardholder data inside our compliance boundary.
• Margin awareness. You understand that a recovered payment, a fraud rule, and a false decline all land on the same P&L, and you can size the trade-off rather than optimize one number in isolation.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity and influencing without authority across Engineering, Financial Systems, CX, and CRM.
• Experience operating inside a PCI-DSS Level 1 environment is a plus.
• Exposure to reconciliation, settlement, or ERP-side finance work is a plus.
• Experience with subscription businesses that include physical goods, logistics, or inventory constraints is a plus.

What You’ll Love About Us:

• Competitive base compensation
• Bonus program
• Paid Time Off and Work From Home
• A fun, creative and energetic work environment

About Scentbird

Scentbird inspires fragrance lovers to go beyond the ordinary and sample scents that evoke passion, confidence, and the unknown. Our mission is to revolutionize the way we perfume by bringing the ultimate fragrance playground right to your fingertips and offering a digital subscription service that lets members choose from over 500+ designer perfumes each month.

About the Brands:

• Scentbird: The easiest way for fragrance lovers to discover, try, and buy their favorite scented products without a commitment
• Deck of Scarlet: Deck of Scarlet is on a mission to break the clean category, redefining what clean fragrances should smell like. Composed entirely of vegan, cruelty-free ingredients, our fragrances bridge the gap between the clean and luxury categories, using the highest eau de parfum concentrations housed in sculptural, eye-catching bottles. You shouldn’t have to choose between being luxe and refined, or clean and vegan—now, you don’t have to.
• Confessions Of A Rebel: We were born in 2018, holding fast to the idea that the fragrance industry was in dire need of a change. When we looked around, all we saw was a sea of sameness: outdated archetypes of femininity and masculinity paired with unrelatable images of luxury that we had no say in. In truth, we are complex in ways that cannot be contained in the traditional heteronormative stereotypes, existing beyond the binary with raw, unfiltered voices that deserve to be heard.
• Goodhabit: Enriched with a blend of essential oils, Goodhabit’s clean, vegan, cruelty-free fragrances act as bottled intentions you set free with each mist. Our scents are designed to help you align with the good habits you’re building, while working to enhance and boost your mood. Inhale, exhale, and let the good energy flow through you.
• Sanctuary: Created for those who care about the fate of our planets, Sanctuary offers fragrance for a better future. Our clean, community-driven fragrances are inspired by endangered species and their habitats, each aimed at raising money and awareness for the preservation of their namesake.
• Drift: Drift began as an alternative to all of the tacky air care products on the market. Our products are designed to blend in, with amazing scents that stand out. We take pride in our fragrances, keeping them free from the traditional chemicals used in the fragrance industry. We are always phthalate and paraben free. We never skimp on quality of our scents or the products that deliver them. Our design ethos is simple but effective. We love our community, those who won’t settle for ordinary, and we want to deliver a best in class experience.

Scentbird is committed to bringing individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives into the Nest. We strive to uphold an inclusive environment where individuals of all different backgrounds, ages, colors, ethnicities, gender, or gender identities, genetics, physical or mental abilities, protected veteran status, race, religious or sexual orientation, thrive. We respect the laws enforced by the EEOC and are dedicated internally to going above and beyond in fostering diversity. Come as you are - we’re excited to meet you.