Job Title

Co‐founder & Head of Payment Operations Equity‐first — Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and Future Payments ProjectsOne‐line visionTo simplify, streamline and enable global commerce via a unified platform that maximises approval rates with AI routing and reimagines treasury using stablecoin rails — we're building these two ideas now and will explore others as we validate.Stage and tractionIdea stage; prototypes in progress; bootstrap funding in place. One founder (CEO business lead/developer founder). Seeking a payments co‐founder to co‐lead payments strategy, partner selection, pilots and operational design across both product tracks and future experiments. Founder equity only (vesting terms below). Remote / hybrid; UK preferred.Smart Routing — project summaryWhat it is: a production decision layer that routes each payment attempt to the best available PSP or rail in real time to maximise approval probability and net value.Key deliverables: routing decision API, signed short‐lived Authorization Token, idempotent retry flow, feature pipelines, model monitoring and A/B/holdout experiments to prove approval uplift.Agentic Treasury — project summaryWhat it is: an orchestration and risk‐control layer that enables autonomous agents (software agents acting on behalf of merchants, platforms or workflows) to move value across stablecoin rails, custody partners and fiat on/off‐ramps — delivering near‐real‐time, auditable settlement while optimising cost, liquidity and regulatory safety. Agents act programmatically and therefore require strict delegation, limits, governance and full auditability.Key deliverables for the co‐founder: authorize and execute‐payment API specs with agent token schema and failure modes; custody partner evaluation matrix; agent policy engine and circuit‐breaker design; on‐chain orchestration plan (confirmation policy, batching, gas strategy); reconciliation mapping and exception runbooks; pilot safety checklist (limits, AML gating, insurance, rollback procedures).What you'll also own as a co‐founder first 3–6 monthsShape the payments product portfolio — one‐page strategy, MVP feature lists and unit economics covering Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and follow‐on ideas as appropriate.Validate partners rails and regulatory constraints — map PSPs, acquirers, custody partners, scheme rules and regulator touchpoints; produce a go/no‐go checklist for pilots.Design end‐to‐end operational flows — event schemas, routing and retry heuristics, signed short‐lived Authorization Token spec, atomic on‐chain transfer APIs, reconciliation mappings and integration APIs for the developer founder.Define ML and data ops requirements — feature pipelines, production inference constraints, model latency and drift monitoring, idempotent retry constraints and A/B/holdout experiment design to prove approval uplift.Build compliance controls and auditable evidence — KYC/AML approach, safeguarding model, auditable logs, retention policy, dispute evidence capture and privacy‐compliant data handling.Design treasury and custody mechanics — custody partner evaluation (custodial vs non‐custodial), hot/cold wallet ops, gas and fee optimisation, liquidity ladders, and off‐ramp strategy.Secure sandboxes and run pilots — negotiate sandbox/pilot agreements, run pilots across both tracks, own incident response and post‐mortems, and capture evidence for audits and investor diligence.Measure iterate and scale — define target metrics (example targets: +X% approval uplift vs baseline; Y% reduction in settlement latency; reconciliation accuracy >99.9%), build experiment plans, produce investor‐ready pilot reports and define first ops hires and automation priorities.Must‐have experience non‐negotiable6–10+ years in payments or fintech operations with senior ownership of processing and settlement.Practical experience with card schemes Visa/Mastercard and UK rails FPS BACS and/or SEPA/cross‐border flows.Built or run reconciliation exception handling chargeback/dispute workflows and GL handoffs.Led PSP acquirer integrations from sandbox to pilot and negotiated commercial terms.Hands‐on AML KYC safeguarding and operational evidence for audits or regulator diligence.Authored runbooks led on‐call rotations and reduced MTTR in incidents.Strong commercial judgement and contract negotiation experience.Technical fluency with APIs webhooks and ability to translate ops needs into integration specs.Smart Routing specific: production experience with decline‐recovery multi‐PSP routing or retry logic; feature engineering; model monitoring (latency drift); and A/B/holdout experiment design to measure approval uplift.Agentic Treasury specific: hands‐on with treasury design stablecoin integrations custody partner evaluation, on‐chain settlement flows, hot/cold wallet management, gas/fee optimisation, liquidity management and off‐ramp integrations.Security and audit: familiarity with signed short‐lived tokens, KMS/HSM basics, key rotation and auditable evidence stores for disputes.Founder terms and logisticsEquity: Founder‐level equity. Typical vesting: 4 years with a 1‐year cliff. Structure open and negotiable.Compensation: Equity‐first only — no stipend.Commitment: Flexible to start (part‐time), with option to move full‐time as we validate.Location: Remote / Hybrid; UK requirement for partner meetings, ideally Manchester or surrounding areas.Legal: Founder status will be formalised on the cap table and via a founder agreement.Style: Professional but very down to earth. Friendly and relaxed.How to reach us founder‐to‐founderMessage via LinkedIn (Easy Apply or direct message) with:Which track excites you most (Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury or both) and why.A short summary of a payments integration or pilot you led (sandbox → pilot → outcome).Confirmation you're open to founder equity (vesting 4y/1y cliff) and a flexible commitment.