Fintech Operations Director

Can you help us change the world? At Mews, we dream big. As a Hotel Tech unicorn valued at $2.5b, we’re propelling new-generation cloud technology within global hospitality. With our industry-leading property management solution, we’re enabling the world’s most revolutionary hospitality brands to accelerate their digital transformation.

We’re on the lookout for ambitious, tenacious and passionate people who want to join the next generation of innovators and disrupt the hospitality industry with us.

About the role

This is a critical leadership role for the Fintech organization at Mews. As we enter our next phase of hypergrowth and work to mature our payments operations, we are seeking an experienced payments and fintech operations leader to be our fintech "COO" to build and scale the operational backbone of our global Fintech business at Mews. This role reports directly to the SVP, GM of Fintech and would be the leader and head of our fintech operations team.

This role requires a unique blend of strategic leadership and hands-on operational execution, ensuring that our payment operations, first-line compliance activities and fraud management capabilities are robust, efficient, and fully aligned with regulatory expectations.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in fintech, payments and regulated financial services, with a proven track record of optimizing and automating processes and building and running high-performing operational teams in a fast-paced environment.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Own and execute the overall fintech operations strategy, ensuring payments, fraud and first-line compliance can scale with our growth.
• Lead day-to-day payment operations across all rails (cards, SEPA, APMs, wallets), including settlements, reconciliation, exceptions and incident management.
• Oversee first-line fraud and risk operations – rule design, monitoring and investigations – and drive initiatives that reduce losses while protecting customer experience.
• Run chargeback and dispute operations, improving recovery rates and keeping scheme and acquirer metrics within agreed thresholds.
• Lead first-line compliance operations (KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, ongoing reviews), partnering with second-line teams on policies, controls and audits.
• Build and develop a high-performing 15–16 person team (via four direct reports), setting clear priorities, expectations and growth paths.
• Drive continuous improvement and automation across tools, processes and workflows, using data and KPIs to prioritise what to fix first.
• Act as a senior operational counterpart to Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, Finance and Customer teams on new products, markets and initiatives.

You’ll be a great fit if you bring a few of the below with you:

• 8+ years’ experience in operational leadership within payments, fintech or regulated financial services, ideally in a high-growth environment.
• Proven ownership of payment operations end-to-end: settlements, reconciliation, exceptions and dispute management.
• Experience leading fraud and first-line compliance teams (KYC/KYB, transaction monitoring, sanctions, investigations) in a regulated context.
• Track record of using data, automation and modern tooling (including AI where relevant) to improve processes and scale operations efficiently.
• Strong understanding of payment rails and fraud/monitoring tools, and comfort working across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory regimes.
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead teams of ~15+ people, including managers, with clear expectations, feedback and development paths.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills – able to work closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance and Finance, and explain complex topics simply.
• High integrity, risk-aware mindset, and comfort operating both strategically and hands-on, especially in ambiguous or high-pressure situations.

Pay Location A = USA Pay Location B = UK