Platform Product Operations Lead - Payward Services

BUILDING THE FUTURE OF OPEN FINANCE Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system. Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page https://www.kraken.com/culture to understand what drives us and how we work. THE TEAM Payward Services is an enterprise infrastructure platform that enables companies to seamlessly integrate trading, payments, funding, and digital asset services through a single unified system. It provides coordinated liquidity, custody, compliance, risk management, and settlement capabilities, reducing operational complexity for fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers. We are looking for a Platform Product Operations Lead to join our Payward Services team. This is a jack-of-all-trades operator: someone who has done the consulting-to-operating transition, is hungry for a remit that outstrips their years, can go as deep on a product flow as on a regulatory filing, and wants to help build a regulated B2B2C business from the inside. You will own the operational running of some of our US regulated entities acting as their functional operating lead; support the licensing workstreams that expand that footprint through to approval; and drive the special projects and platform-growth initiatives that move our Payward Services business forward. THE OPPORTUNITY - Own platform product operations and launch readiness for our B2B2C products (KYC/KYB, lending, unified APIs). Gate go-lives against regulatory and operational requirements, and build the operations that let products ship fast and scale. You're comfortable diving deep into the product itself — how a flow works, where it breaks, and what it takes to launch it in a regulated market. - Drive cross-functional execution on roadmap milestones, compliance deliverables, and infrastructure work — running complex programs across Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and external partners. - Run day-to-day operations across our US regulated entities, licensing maintenance, operational risk and incident management, outsourcing and intra-group coordination, audit and examination readiness, and Board / ExCo / management reporting. You act as the functional operating lead (functional-COO equivalent) for these entities. - Lead the operational work behind our US licensing workstreams — state money transmitter licenses (including NMLS filings) and state lending licenses — partnering with Legal and Compliance to turn regulatory requirements into governance processes, controls, documentation, and the evidence examiners expect, and supporting each licence through to approval where needed. - Serve as the operational counterpart to regulators and examiners alongside Legal and Compliance: information requests, supervisory queries, incident notifications, and closing out follow-up actions. - Represent the operational side of the US regulated entities in board, regulatory, and executive discussions, and champion a high-leverage operating model — defining core metrics, improving systems, and elevating how we build and scale regulated B2B products. WHAT YOU BRING - 8–12 years of experience, with roots in strategy consulting (MBB, Big 4 strategy, or boutique) and a proven track record of operational execution in-house. - Time spent operating inside a scaling fintech, bank, or crypto firm in roles like special projects, chief of staff, operations strategy, business/product operations, or operations lead — with a track record of taking on scope well beyond your title. - Experience running or working on a B2B or B2B2C business in tech, ideally including running or supporting platform teams (shared infrastructure, APIs, internal-client / partner models). - A genuine jack-of-all-trades who can dive into product: co…