Payments / Deposit Operations Lead — Bank Core Build & Migration

A financial-services team is building out its in-house payments operation and needs a hands-on lead to own daily money movement — ACH, wires, and checks — plus reconciliation and the SOPs behind them. This is a practitioner role, not an advisory one. You'll own the operational side of money movement end to end — exceptions, returns, and reconciliation — and write and run the procedures that keep it clean. You'd be the first dedicated owner of this function, so comfort building from scratch matters more than a big playbook to inherit. What you'll own Deposit-operations execution — day-to-day handling of check, ACH, and wire exceptions and returns (in-clearing returns, manual wire posting/repair, unpostable items, hold-harmless handling, ACH exceptions). Reconciliation — own the bank-facing reconciliation, resolve breaks, and partner with engineering to close reconciliation gaps as new capabilities ship (e.g., card dispute / chargeback reconciliation). SOP authorship & execution — write and operate the day-to-day procedures for checks, wires, and ACH; if volume warrants, hire and train the team underneath the role. Bank & vendor liaison — serve as the operational point of contact with the sponsor bank and the check vendor: returns flow, exception-handling cadence, contract terms, and dates. Operational readiness — build the operational runbook for launch and cutover (cohort handling, exception-capacity planning) and run operational acceptance testing. Coordination — feed status into the weekly delivery cadence and coordinate cleanly with the payments program manager so the roles complement rather than overlap. Must-have experience Hands-on deposit / payment operations at a bank, sponsor bank, BaaS provider, credit union, or fintech. Direct experience with ACH (NACHA rules, returns/exceptions), wires (Fedwire, manual posting/repair), and check processing (in-clearing returns, Reg CC, returns model). Reconciliation ownership — you've owned a bank-facing recon and worked breaks to resolution. Written SOPs and driven operational readiness for a launch or transition. Comfortable in a build-from-scratch environment where procedures don't exist yet and you create them. Nice to have Core conversion / platform-transition operational experience (readiness and cutover). Sponsor-bank / FBO / BaaS program experience. Familiarity with Fed connectivity / FedLine and certification workstreams. Chargeback / card dispute operations.