Co founder & Head of Payment Operations Equity first — Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and Future Payments Projects

Co‐founder & Head of Payment Operations Equity‐first — Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and Future Payments Projects

One‐line vision

To simplify, streamline and enable global commerce via a unified platform that maximises approval rates with AI routing and reimagines treasury using stablecoin rails — we’re building these two ideas now and will explore others as we validate.

Stage and traction

Idea stage; prototypes in progress; bootstrap funding in place. One founder (CEO business lead/developer founder). Seeking a payments co‐founder to co‐lead payments strategy, partner selection, pilots and operational design across both product tracks and future experiments. Founder equity only (vesting terms below). Remote / hybrid; UK preferred.

Smart Routing — project summary

What it is: a production decision layer that routes each payment attempt to the best available PSP or rail in real time to maximise approval probability and net value.

Key deliverables: routing decision API, signed short‐lived Authorization Token, idempotent retry flow, feature pipelines, model monitoring and A/B/holdout experiments to prove approval uplift.

Agentic Treasury — project summary

What it is: an orchestration and risk‐control layer that enables autonomous agents (software agents acting on behalf of merchants, platforms or workflows) to move value across stablecoin rails, custody partners and fiat on/off‐ramps — delivering near‐real‐time, auditable settlement while optimising cost, liquidity and regulatory safety. Agents act programmatically and therefore require strict delegation, limits, governance and full auditability.

Key deliverables for the co‐founder: authorize and execute‐payment API specs with agent token schema and failure modes; custody partner evaluation matrix; agent policy engine and circuit‐breaker design; on‐chain orchestration plan (confirmation policy, batching, gas strategy); reconciliation mapping and exception runbooks; pilot safety checklist (limits, AML gating, insurance, rollback procedures).

What you’ll also own as a co‐founder first 3–6 months

• Shape the payments product portfolio — one‐page strategy, MVP feature lists and unit economics covering Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury and follow‐on ideas as appropriate.
• Validate partners rails and regulatory constraints — map PSPs, acquirers, custody partners, scheme rules and regulator touchpoints; produce a go/no‐go checklist for pilots.
• Design end‐to‐end operational flows — event schemas, routing and retry heuristics, signed short‐lived Authorization Token spec, atomic on‐chain transfer APIs, reconciliation mappings and integration APIs for the developer founder.
• Define ML and data ops requirements — feature pipelines, production inference constraints, model latency and drift monitoring, idempotent retry constraints and A/B/holdout experiment design to prove approval uplift.
• Build compliance controls and auditable evidence — KYC/AML approach, safeguarding model, auditable logs, retention policy, dispute evidence capture and privacy‐compliant data handling.
• Design treasury and custody mechanics — custody partner evaluation (custodial vs non‐custodial), hot/cold wallet ops, gas and fee optimisation, liquidity ladders, and off‐ramp strategy.
• Secure sandboxes and run pilots — negotiate sandbox/pilot agreements, run pilots across both tracks, own incident response and post‐mortems, and capture evidence for audits and investor diligence.
• Measure iterate and scale — define target metrics (example targets: +X% approval uplift vs baseline; Y% reduction in settlement latency; reconciliation accuracy >99.9%), build experiment plans, produce investor‐ready pilot reports and define first ops hires and automation priorities.

Must‐have experience non‐negotiable

• 6–10+ years in payments or fintech operations with senior ownership of processing and settlement.
• Practical experience with card schemes Visa/Mastercard and UK rails FPS BACS and/or SEPA/cross‐border flows.
• Built or run reconciliation exception handling chargeback/dispute workflows and GL handoffs.
• Led PSP acquirer integrations from sandbox to pilot and negotiated commercial terms.
• Hands‐on AML KYC safeguarding and operational evidence for audits or regulator diligence.
• Authored runbooks led on‐call rotations and reduced MTTR in incidents.
• Strong commercial judgement and contract negotiation experience.
• Technical fluency with APIs webhooks and ability to translate ops needs into integration specs.
• Smart Routing specific: production experience with decline‐recovery multi‐PSP routing or retry logic; feature engineering; model monitoring (latency drift); and A/B/holdout experiment design to measure approval uplift.
• Agentic Treasury specific: hands‐on with treasury design stablecoin integrations custody partner evaluation, on‐chain settlement flows, hot/cold wallet management, gas/fee optimisation, liquidity management and off‐ramp integrations.
• Security and audit: familiarity with signed short‐lived tokens, KMS/HSM basics, key rotation and auditable evidence stores for disputes.

Founder terms and logistics

• Equity: Founder‐level equity. Typical vesting: 4 years with a 1‐year cliff. Structure open and negotiable.
• Compensation: Equity‐first only — no stipend.
• Commitment: Flexible to start (part‐time), with option to move full‐time as we validate.
• Location: Remote / Hybrid; UK requirement for partner meetings, ideally Manchester or surrounding areas.
• Legal: Founder status will be formalised on the cap table and via a founder agreement.
• Style: Professional but very down to earth. Friendly and relaxed.

How to reach us founder‐to‐founder

Message via LinkedIn (Easy Apply or direct message) with:

• Which track excites you most (Smart Routing, Agentic Treasury or both) and why.
• A short summary of a payments integration or pilot you led (sandbox → pilot → outcome).
• Confirmation you’re open to founder equity (vesting 4y/1y cliff) and a flexible commitment.