Payment Operations Manager

Astra is building mission-critical infrastructure for moving money at scale. Our platform processes billions in annual transaction volume with 99.9%+ uptime, powering real-time transfers, bank debits, card disbursements, and complex financial compliance systems. We provide APIs and automation tools that enable businesses to move money programmatically while maintaining strict regulatory requirements.

Every dollar that moves through Astra touches payment operations. Settlement has to close. Disputes have to be answered. Edge cases have to be caught before a client does. Right now, Astra has built systems and automations to handle as much of these workflows as possible, but we are scaling fast and this role will define how efficiently we are able to do so.

You will own the operational layer of Astra's payment processing engine: reconciliation across every rail we support, the monitoring infrastructure that catches breaks before they become incidents, and the dispute workflow from intake to outcome. You will report directly to the CEO and work side by side with Engineering, Compliance, and Banking Partnerships to make the entire system more reliable over time.

This is a builder role. The processes, tooling, and standards you put in place will define how Astra operates at 10x current volume. If you want to manage an existing function, this is not the right fit. If you want to build one, it is.

Reconciliation and Settlement

• Own end-to-end reconciliation across all Astra rails: Visa Direct, Mastercard Move, RTP, FedNow, ACH, and stablecoin

• Build and maintain daily/intraday settlement processes that catch breaks early and resolve them fast

• Partner with Engineering to automate reconciliation pipelines -- reducing manual toil, not just documenting it

• Establish clear exception workflows: categorize, route, escalate, and close breaks within defined SLAs

• Own the source-of-truth ledger that Finance, Product, and Banking partners can rely on

Monitoring and Edge Case Remediation

• Design and operate the monitoring layer for transaction health: success rates, latency, return codes, and anomalies by rail

• Build alerting that surfaces edge cases -- stuck transactions, unexpected return codes, settlement gaps -- before clients feel them

• Partner closely with Engineering to instrument observability, write runbooks, and build self-healing automation where it makes sense

• Own post-mortems on operational failures: root cause, remediation, and preventing recurrence

• Track and report on operational KPIs weekly: settlement break rates, dispute win rates, mean time to resolve

Dispute and Chargeback Management

• Own the full dispute lifecycle across card network and ACH rails: intake, evidence compilation, submission, and outcome tracking

• Build and maintain a dispute calendar that ensures no response deadline is missed across Visa, Mastercard, and NACHA

• Manage the evidence workflow in coordination with clients and the Customer Success team

• Track dispute rates by client, rail, and transaction type -- and surface patterns that indicate upstream product or onboarding issues

• Represent Astra with banking partners and card networks on dispute escalations

Banking Partner and Rail Operations

• Serve as the day-to-day operational contact for Astra's banking partners across settlement, funding, and exception handling

• Own the operational relationship with card networks (Visa Direct, Mastercard Move) and RTP/FedNow operators

• Coordinate with Compliance on NACHA rule adherence, return rate thresholds, and network reporting requirements

• Surface partner-level issues -- degraded rails, delayed settlements, network outages -- and manage communications internally

Required Experience

• 5+ years in payment operations, fintech operations, or financial partner operations at a payments infrastructure company, bank, or processor

• Deep fluency in multi-rail money movement: ACH, RTP/FedNow, card push (Visa Direct / Mastercard Move), and ideally stablecoin rails

• Hands-on reconciliation experience -- not just process ownership, but the ability to get into data, write queries, and build the tooling

• Proven dispute and chargeback management background, including working knowledge of Visa and Mastercard dispute rules and NACHA return code frameworks

• Technically fluent: comfortable working with engineers, reading API logs, and shaping monitoring requirements -- you don't need to code, but you speak the language

• Operator's mentality: you build processes, not decks. You close loops. You own outcomes

• Experience in an early-to-mid-stage company where you have had to build from scratch, not just maintain what exists

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Technology, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred Experience

• Experience working at a payment facilitator, payment processor, or infrastructure-layer fintech (not just a merchant or SaaS company using a PSP)

• Experience building or owning operational dashboards and alerting in tools like Datadog, Metabase, or similar

• Prior exposure to sponsor bank relationships and the operational requirements that come with them

• Familiarity with stablecoin or blockchain-based settlement flows

• Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company.

• Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements

• Small team, big impact — your work directly supports Astra’s ability to scale responsibly

• Professional growth opportunities in compliance and risk management

• Mission-driven — build infrastructure that powers financial innovation while meeting the highest regulatory standards

Astra is a remote-first company hiring only within the U.S. We value thoughtful collaboration, clarity, and initiative. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.