Director, Product - Analytics & Data Decisioning

Director, Product - Payments Analytics & Data Decisioning

Western Union seeks a strategic and technically strong Director, Payments Analytics & Decisioning to lead the development of advanced data capabilities that power smarter, faster, and more reliable payment decisions across our global remittance platform.

• Own analytics strategy and insights for global payments performance, including success rates, cost per transaction, partner performance, and operational efficiency.
• Lead data-driven experimentation and optimization efforts related to payment method selection, routing, retry strategies, and settlement flows.
• Develop dashboards and frameworks to track KPIs, support product and finance decisions, and monitor trends across markets.

• Build and deploy models that inform routing, retry logic, and payment prioritization based on factors such as cost, speed, method availability, and past performance.
• Design decisioning frameworks that use transaction-level intelligence to optimize throughput and customer outcomes.
• Partner with Product and Engineering (and Chief Data Officer function) to integrate models and business rules into real-time decisioning infrastructure.

• Define the data architecture and requirements to enable comprehensive, accurate, and scalable payments data pipelines.
• Work with Data Engineering to ensure high-quality structured datasets that power both real-time and offline analytics.
• Establish a unified data model across payment types (cards, bank transfers, wallets, etc.) and regions.

• Act as the primary data science partner to the Payments Product team, contributing to roadmap planning and product strategy.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Operations, Finance, and Partner Management to align insights with business goals.
• Build, manage, and mentor a team of data scientists and analysts focused on payment analytics.

• 8+ years of experience in data science or advanced analytics, with at least 3 years in a leadership capacity.
• Deep knowledge of the payments ecosystem—cards, bank transfers, real-time payments, wallets, and alternative payment methods.
• Strong SQL and Python skills, with hands-on experience in predictive modeling, experimentation, and A/B testing.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver measurable impact through data in large-scale, global product or platform environments.
• Exceptional communication skills and comfort working across technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience with remittances, cross-border payments, or multi-region payment platforms.
• Familiarity with the economics and mechanics of payment processing (authorization flows, success rate drivers, cost levers).
• Experience with modern data tooling (e.g., Snowflake, dbt, Bedrock/ Dataiku, Airflow, Looker, Mode).
• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Economics, or related quantitative field.

• Flexible Time off
• Medical, Dental and Life Insurance
• Tuition Assistance Program
• Parental Leave
• One day volunteer time off
• $0 Money Transfer Fee Discount Code – Quarterly
• Recognition Program “Game Changers”
• Employee Discount Program
• Global Adoption Assistance
• Global Scholarship Awards Program
• 4% Western Union Contribution to 401K

Location: New York, NY or Atlanta, GA
Base Salary Range: $160,000 - $250,000 per year, plus performance incentives.