Director of Payment Operations and Financial Services

Overview

Why Vagaro?

At Vagaro, we believe in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment where every team member can thrive. Our culture is built on innovation, continuous learning, and a passion for making a positive impact. We support our employees  growth and vision for themselves, offering opportunities for professional development and career advancement. Join us and be part of a team that values creativity, teamwork, and a commitment to excellence.

Plus, we know how to have fun while getting the job done!

What you ll Be Doing: The Director of Payment Operations & Financial Services owns the day-to-day execution and performance of Vagaro’s payments and embedded finance ecosystem. This is a hands-on operator role responsible for improving payment revenue and margin, optimizing transaction performance, strengthening risk outcomes, and ensuring operational readiness and compliance across card-present, card-not-present, ACH, and wallet-based payment solutions.

This role also owns payments economics: forecasting, financial modeling, opportunity sizing, and executive-ready materials that drive decision-making. You will work closely with FP&A and Data teams, but you are expected to personally build and maintain key models, dashboards, and weekly leadership updates.

You will partner tightly with a Payments Analyst who owns ongoing monitoring and reporting. Together, you will ensure Vagaro detects issues early, acts quickly, and continuously improves profitability and merchant experience.

This role is based onsite in Pleasanton, CA Monday through Friday

Compensation

• Base Annual Salary: $170,000 to $240,000
• Annual Bonus:
  Up to 10%

Your Impact:

What you ll own (Core Responsibilities)

• Execute Vagaro’s payments roadmap with clear milestones, owners, and measurable outcomes.
• Actively manage payments performance across POS, card-present, card-not-present, ACH, and digital wallet solutions.
• Own the core metrics that define success, including authorization rate, net yield, cost of processing, interchange impact, refund/void trends, dispute/chargeback rates, fraud loss, and funding performance.
• Identify revenue expansion, cost optimization, and margin improvement opportunities using rigorous analysis and clear prioritization.
• Build scenario models for pricing changes, partner economics, and new product launches; quantify ROI, margin impact, and operational requirements.
• Drive merchant adoption of Vagaro payment solutions through improved onboarding, performance, and support readiness.
• Accountable for achieving payments revenue, margin, and performance goals.

2) Operational Excellence & Reliability

• Improve operational scalability through documented processes, controls, and monitoring routines.
• Establish a consistent operating cadence (daily health checks, weekly KPI review, monthly close/performance review).
• Partner with Data/Engineering to improve reporting accuracy, data availability, and metric definitions ( single source of truth ).
• Ensure dashboards and alerts exist for key performance and risk indicators, with clear thresholds and escalation paths.
• Identify process gaps, define fixes, and drive implementation through cross-functional execution (Support, Risk, Product, Engineering, Finance).
• Own operational readiness for launches and changes (runbooks, training, support workflows, issue triage, post-launch reviews).

3) Financial Products & Embedded Finance

• Execute and scale embedded finance solutions such as instant payouts, lending/capital, BNPL, and other financial tools aligned to Vagaro customers.
• Evaluate product viability, risk exposure, and revenue contribution; track portfolio performance and provide recurring reporting.
• Manage relationships with banks, card brands, financial institutions, and fintech partners.
• Support commercial negotiations with processors and financial partners by preparing economic analysis and contract scenario evaluation.
• Identify new revenue opportunities and translate them into clear business cases with resourcing and timeline requirements.

4) Leadership, Cross-Functional Execution & Communication

• Lead and develop the Payments function with a…