Director, Safety ​/ Security

About Us

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

The successful candidate will serve as a senior leader and thought partner with a proven record of developing and managing global intelligence and protective intelligence programs. This role is responsible for advancing enterprise capabilities in threat identification, geopolitical analysis, investigations, and executive risk management, while leading the continued evolution of a mature and high performing intelligence function. The Director will define and drive the strategic vision for the Protective Intelligence program, including oversight of threat assessment processes, intake mechanisms, and standard operating procedures, ensuring alignment with organizational priorities and risk tolerance.

This is a highly visible and high impact role requiring strong collaboration and communication with senior leadership and stakeholders across the enterprise. The Director will lead a small team responsible for identifying and assessing threats, delivering timely and actionable intelligence, and developing analytical products that support decision making. The role provides anticipatory warning and clear, risk based recommendations, and is accountable for establishing escalation thresholds and advising leadership on critical risk decisions during incidents and emerging threat situations.

The Director also will serve as Deputy Director for the Global Security Operations Center and Intelligence function, providing leadership support during major incidents, crises, and high tempo operational periods. In these situations, the role is expected to expand beyond protective intelligence scope as needed, ensuring coordinated response, prioritization of risks, and alignment of intelligence and operational efforts across the organization. The Director will also provide regular direction and guidance to the GSOC during major events, high profile executive travel, and other elevated risk situations.

This role includes direct management of a Protective Intelligence Analyst and broader responsibility for mentoring and developing analysts and operators across the intelligence and GSOC teams. The Director is expected to elevate analytic tradecraft, provide structured feedback and training, and help build a strong and sustainable pipeline of talent across the function.

The Director will lead and mature the Protective Intelligence program by enhancing capabilities related to executive threats, digital exposure and vulnerability management, global events and sponsor ships, brand and reputational risk, talent acquisition related threats, and high risk travel support. The role is responsible for leading active threat monitoring across multiple sources, including internal reporting channels and external platforms, and ensuring consistent triage, assessment, and response.

This includes coordinating training and awareness efforts with business partners such as recruiting, communications, and other frontline teams to strengthen early identification and escalation of potential threats.

The Director will drive strong collaboration across cross functional partners including cyber, insider threat, crisis management, recruiting, marketing, sponsorship, and executive support functions to ensure coordinated risk mitigation and effective information sharing. The role will also be responsible for developing and continuously refining the technical and analytical roadmap for the program, ensuring the effective use of tools, data, and systems to enhance both analytic output and operational efficiency.

In addition, the Director will have ownership of key program…