About this role.
Kalshi seeks a Payments Lead to own end-to-end payment strategy and operations for deposits, withdrawals, payment-service-provider integrations, and settlement performance. The role combines roadmap leadership with hands-on operational execution, including provider management, payment troubleshooting, reconciliation, and payment-health monitoring. It partners closely with engineering, growth, legal, and compliance to improve conversion while meeting KYC, AML, and CFTC-related obligations. The ideal candidate has at least five years of payments, fintech, or product-operations experience and can analyze payment funnels, APIs, fraud controls, and unit economics. This is a high-impact role in a fast-growing, regulated financial-markets environment.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
5/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
5/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.
Sample interview questions
I would segment declines by processor response code, card type, issuer, payment method, geography, and customer cohort, then validate the data with PSP logs. I would prioritize high-volume, addressable causes such as retry logic, descriptor clarity, authentication routing, tokenization, or acquirer configuration, measure conversion and fraud outcomes through controlled tests, and implement changes with clear guardrails.
I would build a scorecard covering approval rates, coverage, reliability, settlement speed, fraud tooling, integration complexity, support quality, contract terms, and total processing economics. I would compare the provider against current performance by relevant segments, conduct technical and compliance diligence, negotiate commercial protections and service-level commitments, and plan a staged rollout with reconciliation and fallback procedures.
The dashboard would track deposit and withdrawal volume, authorization and completion rates, decline reasons, latency, payout success, settlement aging, chargebacks, fraud losses, manual-review rates, and provider uptime. I would enable drill-downs by PSP, payment method, issuer, user cohort, and product flow, with thresholds and alerts for material deviations.
I would use a risk-based approach that applies the least intrusive control appropriate to the customer and transaction risk. This includes progressive verification, automation for low-risk cases, clear user messaging, effective vendor integrations, and regular monitoring of abandonment, review times, false positives, and compliance outcomes.
I would first establish impact, scope, and customer risk; activate the relevant engineering and provider contacts; and use dashboards and logs to isolate the failing component. I would implement a safe mitigation such as routing, feature gating, or a manual operations process, communicate status to stakeholders, reconcile affected transactions, and complete a root-cause review with preventative actions.
Kalshi is defining a new category
Kalshi has defined a new category: prediction markets. Kalshi allows people to trade on the outcome of any events and turn any question about the future into a financial asset. Kalshi fought for years and legalized prediction markets in the US for the first time in history. Kalshi is currently the fastest growing financial market in America, and has thousands of markets across politics, economics, financials, weather, tech, AI, culture and more.
We believe prediction markets have the potential to be the largest financial market because they turn anything into a financial position.
- Our vision: well… build the largest financial market on the planet.
- Our mission: bring more truth to the world through the power of markets.
Building a new category is hard… like really hard. But it’s beautiful and deeply fulfilling. Our culture is simple: we hire really talented people, work really hard, and enjoy the climb. We are looking for ambitious and exceptional people to join our (relatively small) team to help us build the next generation of financial markets.
About the Role
As Payments Lead, you’ll own the full lifecycle of payments at Kalshi — from strategy to hands-on execution. You’ll manage and coordinate the roadmap for deposits, withdrawals, and PSP integrations, while also directly managing providers, resolving issues, and monitoring day-to-day performance. You’ll sit at the intersection of product, operations, engineering, compliance, and growth, ensuring that payments are reliable, fast, and delightful.
What You’ll Do
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the payments roadmap: prioritize and drive initiatives that improve payment success, speed, and user experience in coordination with Engineering and Growth and other parts of the organization.
- Manage PSPs and financial partners: negotiate terms, oversee performance, and troubleshoot operational issues with processors, banks, and other partners.
- Optimize conversion and payouts: continuously improve the deposit and withdrawal experience, authorization rates, and settlement times through data-driven experimentation.
- Monitor and analyze payment health: build dashboards, track KPIs (authorization rates, declines, chargebacks, latency), and identify root causes.
- Ensure compliance and regulatory alignment: Partner with Legal/Compliance to handle KYC, AML, and CFTC-related obligations in the payments flow.
- Manage fraud prevention and response: manage fraud tools and policies, ensuring a balance between risk control and user experience. Monitor fraud and compliance health.
- Be hands-on: dive into payment ops workflows, test new integrations, reconcile issues, and own execution when needed.
What We’re Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or product operations.
- Strong understanding of the payments ecosystem: PSPs, acquirers, processors, payment methods, fraud tools, and settlement processes.
- Experience leading cross-functional projects involving engineering, compliance, and growth.
- Proven negotiation and vendor management skills with PSPs and banks.
- Analytical and technical proficiency: able to model economics, analyze funnel data, and interpret API documentation.
- Bias toward action: comfortable switching between strategic planning and hands-on execution.
- Excellent communication and project management skills.
Commitment to Equal Opportunity
Kalshi is committed to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe it is our collective responsibility to uphold these values and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to join us in our mission. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, uniform service, veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law. If you are passionate about what you do and want to use your talents to support our mission and values, we’d love to hear from you.
Annual salary information is not provided for this position. Explore salary ranges for similar roles in our Salary Directory ›
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