Operations Group Manager - Payments

At U.S. Bank, we’re on a journey to do our best. Helping the customers and businesses we serve to make better and smarter financial decisions and enabling the communities we support to grow and succeed. We believe it takes all of us to bring our shared ambition to life, and each person is unique in their potential. A career with U.S. Bank gives you a wide, ever-growing range of opportunities to discover what makes you thrive at every stage of your career. Try new things, learn new skills and discover what you excel at—all from Day One.

Job Description

The Operations Group Manager, Payments Operations is a senior executive leadership role responsible for defining and executing the strategic direction and operational transformation of a large-scale payments organization. This leader will establish and advance an integrated, end-to-end payments operating model designed to deliver a consistent client and partner experience, strengthen operational performance and controls, and position the organization for continued growth and innovation.

The Operations Group Manager will lead enterprise-wide strategies across payment operations, service delivery, payment investigations, digital adoption, technology resiliency, automation, data, and payment rail integration. The role will bring together currently interconnected operational capabilities to create a more unified, scalable, and technology-enabled payments ecosystem.

The successful leader will operate across business, operations, technology, product, risk, and other partner organizations to translate the bank's payments strategy into measurable operational outcomes. This executive will establish clear governance and accountability, modernize processes, leverage artificial intelligence and automation, and build the operational infrastructure necessary to support an increasingly complex, digital, and real-time payments environment.

Key Responsibilities

Payments Operations Strategy & Transformation

• •Define and execute a comprehensive, multi-year strategy for Payments Operations aligned with broader business, client, technology, and risk priorities.
• •Build a connected, end-to-end payments ecosystem that increases consistency across payment products, rails, operational processes, and servicing capabilities.
• •Establish an integrated operating model that connects strategy, execution, service delivery, technology, data, controls, and client experience.
• •Evaluate the existing operating environment and identify opportunities to simplify processes, reduce fragmentation, eliminate manual work, and increase scalability.
• •Develop appropriate performance measures, governance structures, and executive reporting to demonstrate operational effectiveness and strategic progress.
• •Lead significant organizational and operational change while maintaining strong execution and service continuity.

End-to-End Client & Partner Experience

• •Drive a consistent end-to-end client and partner experience across the payments organization.
• •Establish measurable service outcomes and accountability for performance across operational and partner teams.
• •Identify friction points throughout the payments lifecycle and develop strategies that improve client experience, responsiveness, transparency, and resolution times.
• •Partner across product, sales, relationship management, technology, risk, and operations to ensure the operating model supports both client expectations and business objectives.
• •Champion digital adoption and leverage technology to simplify client and partner interactions.

Escalation Management & Service Excellence

• •Design and strengthen an enterprise-wide escalation framework that enables faster issue identification and resolution, clear ownership, and end-to-end transparency.
• •Establish governance for complex operational issues and ensure appropriate accountability across Payments Operations and partner organizations.
• •Advance the use of platforms such as ServiceNow to create scalable escalation management, workflow automation, improved visibility, analytics, and reporting.
• •Establish clear protocols for Level 2 and Level 3 issue management, escalation, ownership, root-cause identification, and closure.
• •Develop performance metrics that measure issue resolution, recurring operational themes, service quality, and effectiveness of corrective actions.

Payments Technology, AI & Automation

• •Develop and execute an operations technology strategy that supports the future-state payments ecosystem.
• •Advance AI and automation initiatives, including capabilities such as SkanAI, to improve operational efficiency, accuracy, scalability, and service delivery.
• •Identify opportunities to automate highly manual operational processes and redirect capacity toward higher-value activities.
• •Partner closely with technology leadership to establish priorities, technology investments, implementation roadmaps, and measurable business outcomes.
• •Drive adoption of digital tools and capabilities across Payments Operations.
• •Strengthen technology resiliency and operational readiness to support highly available and business-critical payment services.

Payment Rail Integration

• •Develop an operating strategy that supports greater integration and consistency across payment rails.
• •Partner with product and technology organizations to ensure operational readiness for new and evolving payment capabilities.
• •Identify opportunities to standardize processes, controls, data, servicing, and investigations across payment types.
• •Establish scalable processes that can accommodate continued changes in the payments landscape without creating unnecessary operational complexity.

Data Strategy & Operational Intelligence

• •Drive adoption and effective utilization of the Payments Data Mart across the payments organization.
• •Establish a strategy for using operational data to improve decision-making, client service, capacity planning, risk management, and performance measurement.
• •Improve data coordination across payments business lines and supporting organizations.
• •Develop meaningful executive-level performance measures and insights that provide greater visibility into service quality, operational health, trends, risks, escalations, and improvement opportunities.

Payment Investigations

• •Establish a centralized and consistent operating model for payment investigations.
• •Oversee the strategy for investigation intake, routing, research, escalation, clearing, and resolution.
• •Coordinate complex payment investigations with core operational and partner teams to improve resolution speed and accountability.
• •Create greater consistency in investigation procedures, service expectations, controls, and client communication.
• •Leverage workflow technology, data, AI, and automation to improve investigation routing, research, decision-making, and resolution.
• •Establish centralized oversight, governance, performance metrics, and quality standards across payment investigations.

Data Integration & Client Implementation Support

• •Provide strategic oversight for data integration setup and servicing capabilities.
• •Establish centralized support for DI setups, client servicing, client-file testing, feedback, and data mapping.
• •Lead efforts to consolidate DI setup and core support capabilities where greater centralization will improve scale, consistency, quality, and accountability.
• •Strengthen coordination of data requirements and capabilities across payments business lines.
• •Ensure implementation and servicing processes provide consistent experience from client onboarding through ongoing operational support.

Risk, Controls & Resiliency

• •Ensure the Payments Operations organization operates within established risk appetite, regulatory expectations, policies, and control standards.
• •Build operational risk and control considerations into transformation initiatives from inception through implementation.
• •Strengthen technology and operational resili