Payment Operations Regional Team Lead - Service Delivery
Posted on: January 02, 2026 | Operations, Hyderabad
Company Name: WISE (Formerly TransferWise)
Application Deadline: Open Until
Team: Operation | Reports To: Senior Operations Manager
Division: Service Delivery | Employment Type: Full-Time/ Regular
Location: Telangana, Hyderabad, India
Schedule: On-Site (Office-Centric) | Experience Level: 02+ Years
About Wise
Wise is a revolutionary global technology company on a mission to build the best way to move and manage the world's money. With a commitment to minimum fees, maximum ease, and full speed, we're transforming how people and businesses send money internationally, spend abroad, and make cross-border payments.
We're creating an entirely new financial network for the world's money—for everyone, everywhere. As part of our global team of 6,500+ Wisers representing over 70 nationalities across offices from Austin to Tokyo, you'll join a borderless organization that operates with the same efficiency and transparency as our revolutionary product.
Our mission is simple yet profound: make international money transfers easier and save people money. Every day, we help millions of customers move billions in currency across borders, and we're just getting started.
The Opportunity
We're seeking an exceptional Payment Operations Regional Team Lead to build, scale, and lead our new India Payment Operations team in Hyderabad from the ground up. This is not just another leadership role—it's a foundational, high-impact opportunity to shape the future of Wise's operations in one of the world's most dynamic markets.
As the Payment Operations Regional Team Lead, you'll be instrumental in establishing operational excellence for cross-border payment products in India while supporting our continued expansion across the region. This role offers the unique combination of startup-like impact within a proven, rapidly growing global fintech company.
You'll have the autonomy to build systems, processes, and teams that will serve as the backbone of our Indian operations while working closely with product, engineering, compliance, banking teams, and external partners including banks and regulators. Your leadership will directly influence how millions of customers experience Wise's services in India.
How You'll Contribute to the Operations Team
Building and Scaling the India Operations Team
In your first six months, you'll focus intensively on recruitment and onboarding, building a high-skilled team of payment operations specialists from scratch. You'll establish the foundation for a world-class operations team that embodies Wise's values of customer obsession, operational excellence, and collaborative problem-solving.
Your responsibility extends beyond hiring—you'll create comprehensive onboarding programs that transform new team members into payment operations experts who understand the nuances of cross-border transactions, regulatory requirements, and the Indian payment ecosystem. You'll ensure every team member is equipped with the knowledge, tools, and mindset needed to deliver exceptional results.
Operational Excellence and Strategic Leadership
You'll own the operational excellence of our cross-border payment products in India, establishing standards and processes that balance quality, speed, risk management, and cost efficiency. This means developing robust workflows, implementing quality assurance mechanisms, and creating systems that scale seamlessly as transaction volumes grow.
Your strategic vision will guide how we approach payment operations in India—identifying opportunities for automation, streamlining manual processes, and continuously improving our service delivery model. You'll set the benchmark for what excellent payment operations looks like at Wise in the Indian market.
Stakeholder Management and Collaboration
Success in this role requires masterful stakeholder management across multiple dimensions. Internally, you'll work closely with Product teams to understand roadmap priorities, Engineering teams to implement technical solutions, Compliance teams to ensure regulatory adherence, and Banking teams to optimize partner relationships.
Externally, you'll build strong relationships with bank partners and engage with regulators to strengthen Wise's position in the Indian market. You'll establish working rhythms that identify bottlenecks early and drive scalable solutions supporting our aggressive growth trajectory.
Goal Setting, OKR Definition, and Execution
You'll help define clear measures of success for the India operations team, setting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) focused on high-impact areas: quality of service delivery, speed of payment processing, risk mitigation, and cost optimization. These aren't arbitrary metrics—they're carefully chosen indicators that directly correlate with customer satisfaction and business outcomes.
Your leadership will ensure the team understands how their daily work connects to broader company objectives, creating alignment and motivation that drives exceptional performance. You'll track progress rigorously, celebrate wins, and course-correct quickly when needed.
Resource and Workflow Management
Managing team resources and skills strategically ensures optimal coverage and productivity. You'll match specialist capabilities to workload demands, balance immediate operational needs with long-term skill development, and ensure the team isn't just busy but genuinely productive and impactful.
This involves sophisticated workforce planning, understanding peak transaction periods, anticipating regulatory changes that affect workflows, and maintaining flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges without compromising service quality.
Metrics Ownership and Data-Driven Decision Making
You'll own core operational metrics including SLA adherence, quality scores, error rates, processing times, and customer satisfaction indicators. However, ownership means more than monitoring dashboards—it means understanding the story behind every metric movement.
When SLA compliance drops or error rates spike, you'll dig deep into data to identify root causes, whether they're process gaps, training needs, system issues, or external factors. Your analytical rigor ensures we don't just react to symptoms but solve underlying problems permanently.
Incident Management and Operational Resilience
Excellence requires robust incident management capabilities. When issues arise—whether system outages, processing errors, or partner failures—you'll lead the response with urgency and precision. You'll insist on thorough root cause analysis (RCA) for every significant incident and implement preventative measures ensuring we never make the same mistake twice.
Building operational resilience means anticipating potential failure modes, creating contingency plans, conducting regular drills, and fostering a culture where team members feel empowered to escalate issues quickly without fear of blame.
Risk and Compliance Leadership
You'll champion a risk-first culture where every team member understands their role in protecting customers and maintaining Wise's reputation. This means ensuring flawless adherence to compliance protocols, anti-money laundering procedures, know-your-customer requirements, and regulatory obligations specific to Indian payment operations.
Your leadership creates an environment where compliance isn't seen as bureaucratic overhead but as fundamental to serving customers responsibly and sustaining long-term business success.
People Leadership and Team Development
You'll manage the complete lifecycle of your specialists with emphasis on retention and development over mass hiring. This means providing regular, actionable feedback that drives individual career growth, recognizing and rewarding high performance, addressing performance gaps constructively, and creating opportunities for team members to expand their capabilities.
Your leadership style creates a positive, motivating work environment where Wisers feel respected, challenged, and supported. You'll build a team culture characterized by collaboration, continuous learning, customer obsession, and celebrating wins together.
Key Opportunities This Role Provides
Make Tangible Impact
You'll directly influence Wise's strategic goals and operational vision in India while increasing team efficiency and driving toward "Mission Zero"—our aspirational goal of money transfers without fees. Your decisions and actions will affect millions of customers and help democratize access to fair, transparent financial services.
Inspire and Lead Teams
You'll fuel the revolution with your ideas, knowledge, self-starter attitude, and customer insight. Working collaboratively with product, engineering, and other operational teams, you'll solve complex problems that improve customer experiences and advance Wise's mission.
Develop Future Leaders
You'll shape team culture and create an environment where Wisers thrive professionally and personally. You'll implement approaches that maximize health, productivity, and job satisfaction. At Wise, we believe in good karma, not drama—and you'll embody this philosophy daily.
Work in a Global Context
You'll collaborate with internal and external partners worldwide, occasionally traveling to other Wise locations to work and learn alongside international colleagues. As a borderless organization, we communicate seamlessly across teams and geographies, getting things done without artificial barriers.
Required Qualifications
Operational and Analytical Excellence
You possess a proven track record managing front-line operational teams to high-stakes KPIs. You don't merely report data—you use analytics to identify root causes and implement lasting solutions. You're skilled at stabilizing chaotic processes, establishing clear performance frameworks, and setting meaningful OKRs that drive business outcomes.
Your analytical mindset allows you to see patterns in complex data, connect disparate information sources, and make informed decisions under pressure. You understand that metrics tell stories, and you're fluent in translating those stories into actionable strategies.
Leadership and Performance Management Experience
You bring at least two years of leadership experience building and managing high-functioning teams. You're passionate about nurturing talent, effective in managing both strong and underperforming team members, and skilled at creating environments where feedback is valued and continuous improvement is expected.
Your leadership philosophy balances accountability with empathy, high standards with realistic expectations, and results orientation with people-first values. You know how to motivate individuals with different personalities, backgrounds, and career aspirations.
Change Management Capabilities
You're comfortable entering environments requiring restructuring or refinement. You possess the emotional intelligence and strategic thinking needed to guide teams through change, re-establishing standards and processes without damaging morale or losing top performers.
Your change management approach involves transparent communication, stakeholder engagement, quick wins that build momentum, and persistent follow-through ensuring changes stick beyond initial implementation.
Collaboration and Influence Skills
You're an exceptional relationship builder and honest communicator. You adapt your communication style to different audiences—whether persuading senior stakeholders, coaching team members, or negotiating with external partners. You're not afraid to challenge the status quo when customer benefit or operational excellence demands it.
Your collaborative nature makes you effective in matrix organizations where success requires influence without direct authority. You build trust quickly and maintain credibility through consistent delivery on commitments.
Ownership Mindset and Autonomy
You're a self-starter who thrives in autonomous environments with minimal supervision. You take complete ownership of team outputs and outcomes, passionate about delivering exceptional customer experiences. You lead with humility, recognizing that great results come from empowered teams rather than heroic individual efforts.
Your ownership mentality means you don't wait for permission to fix problems—you identify issues, propose solutions, and drive implementation while keeping appropriate stakeholders informed.
Preferred Additional Skills
Cross-Border Team Experience
Experience working in or leading cross-border teams provides valuable perspective on communication challenges, time zone coordination, cultural considerations, and building cohesion across geographical boundaries.
Payments and Fintech Background
Background in payments, fintech, or financial services accelerates your impact by providing context for technical complexity, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices. Experience collaborating with product and engineering teams helps you speak their language and translate between operational realities and technical possibilities.
Lean Six Sigma Expertise
Knowledge of process improvement methodologies like Lean Six Sigma enables you to systematically reduce waste, eliminate variation, and optimize workflows using data-driven approaches that deliver measurable results.
What We Value at Wise
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We're people without borders—without judgment or prejudice. We believe diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams are strongest and help us live our values. We celebrate our differences and ensure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute toward our mission, and able to progress in their career.
Meritocracy and Potential
Where and what you studied isn't important to us. If you have great experience, the right skills, and can articulate your thinking clearly, we want to hear from you. We hire based on potential, passion, and demonstrated capabilities rather than pedigree.
Mission-Driven Culture
We're united by our mission to build money without borders for everyone, everywhere. If you're passionate about making financial services fairer and more accessible, you'll fit right in with our community of 6,500+ Wisers worldwide.
Application Process
If you're ready to build something meaningful from the ground up, lead with impact, and help millions of people access better financial services, we'd love to hear from you. Join Wise in Hyderabad and become part of the team revolutionizing how the world moves money.
Apply now to start your journey with Wise and discover what it means to work for a mission-driven, globally minded fintech leader.
To learn more about life at Wise, visit Wise.Jobs and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Wise is an equal opportunity employer committed to building diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams across the globe.
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