Job Title

Cofounder & Head of Payment Operations Equityfirst Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and Future Payments ProjectsAre you the right applicant for this opportunity Find out by reading through the role overview below.Oneline 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 cofounder to colead 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 shortlived 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 riskcontrol 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/offramps delivering nearrealtime, 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 cofounder: authorize and executepayment API specs with agent token schema and failure modes; custody partner evaluation matrix; agent policy engine and circuitbreaker design; onchain 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 cofounder first 36 monthsShape the payments product portfolio onepage strategy, MVP feature lists and unit economics covering Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and followon ideas as appropriate.Validate partners rails and regulatory constraints map PSPs, acquirers, custody partners, scheme rules and regulator touchpoints; produce a go/nogo checklist for pilots.Design endtoend operational flows event schemas, routing and retry heuristics, signed shortlived Authorization Token spec, atomic onchain 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 privacycompliant data handling.Design treasury and custody mechanics custody partner evaluation (custodial vs noncustodial), hot/cold wallet ops, gas and fee optimisation, liquidity ladders, and offramp strategy.Secure sandboxes and run pilots negotiate sandbox/pilot agreements, run pilots across both tracks, own incident response and postmortems, 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 investorready pilot reports and define first ops hires and automation priorities.Musthave experience nonnegotiable610+ 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/crossborder 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.Handson AML KYC safeguarding and operational evidence for audits or regulator diligence.Authored runbooks led oncall 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 declinerecovery multiPSP routing or retry logic; feature engineering; model monitoring (latency drift); and A/B/holdout experiment design to measure approval uplift.Agentic Treasury specific: handson with treasury design stablecoin integrations custody partner evaluation, onchain settlement flows, hot/cold wallet management, gas/fee optimisation, liquidity management and offramp integrations.Security and audit: familiarity with signed shortlived tokens, KMS/HSM basics, key rotation and auditable evidence stores for disputes.Founder terms and logisticsEquity: Founderlevel equity. Typical vesting: 4 years with a 1year cliff. Structure open and negotiable.Compensation: Equityfirst only no stipend.Commitment: Flexible to start (parttime), with option to move fulltime 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 foundertofounderMessage 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). xjdpvnf Confirmation you're open to founder equity (vesting 4y/1y cliff) and a flexible commitment.