Senior Product Manager, Payments-(Hybrid)

Central 1 cooperatively empowers credit unions and other financial institutions to deliver banking choice to Canadians. Central 1 provides critical services at scale to enable a thriving credit union system. We do this by collaborating with our clients, developing strategies, products and services to support the financial well-being of their more than 5 million diverse customers in communities across Canada. For more information, visit www.central1.com.

What we offer:

• Work-life flexibility

• Hybrid work environment

• Variable annual incentive plan

• Generous annual vacation allotment

• Top-notch flexible benefits plan including family building and gender affirmation

• Retirement Plan, matched contributions at 6%

• Access to a learning platform and educational assistance support

• Access to a virtual wellness platform

• Career development opportunities

• Wellness Flex Fund to support personal interest and activities

• Day off to volunteer in your community and other paid time off options

• Corporate discounts

*subject to employment agreement

Job Summary:

The Senior Product Manager, Payments  provides strategic leadership for a complex product, platform, or portfolio across its full lifecycle. This role sets the product vision and market direction, translates enterprise priorities and customer needs into a multi-year roadmap, and drives measurable customer, financial, operational, and risk outcomes.

Working with a high degree of autonomy, the Senior Product Manager brings together teams across business, technology, operations, risk, compliance, finance, sales, and external partners. They guide investment and prioritization decisions, navigate complex trade-offs, influence senior stakeholders, and ensure product decisions deliver long-term value for customers and the organization.

What you’ll be doing:

Product Strategy & Portfolio Leadership

• Define and communicate the product vision, strategy, value proposition, market positioning, and multi-year roadmap.
• Translate corporate priorities, customer needs, payments industry developments, and regulatory requirements into clear product priorities and investment decisions.
• Build and maintain an integrated roadmap that connects customer outcomes, capabilities, dependencies, funding, and delivery milestones.
• Lead prioritization across initiatives using customer impact, strategic alignment, financial value, risk, regulatory obligations, and organizational capacity.
• Guide products through their full lifecycle, from discovery and launch through growth, modernization, migration, and retirement.
• Coordinate priorities and dependencies across products, platforms, programs, and strategic partners.

Customer, Market & Industry Leadership

• Build trusted relationships with customers, credit unions, industry participants, vendors, networks, and other strategic partners.
• Lead customer discovery and use research, analytics, feedback, user testing, and operational insights to identify opportunities and shape product direction.

• Monitor developments across the Canadian payments landscape, including emerging payment capabilities, modernization, regulatory change, new technologies, and evolving customer expectations.

• Represent the organization in executive customer conversations, industry forums, conferences, advisory groups, and strategic partnerships.
• Ensure customer insights are reflected in product priorities and investment decisions.

Business & Financial Management

• Develop and own business cases, investment proposals, pricing strategies, commercialization plans, and funding recommendations.
• Define and monitor key product outcomes, including revenue, cost-to-serve, margin, adoption, customer satisfaction, service performance, and return on investment.
• Partner with Finance and commercial teams on budgeting, forecasting, pricing, contract economics, and strategic planning.
• Identify opportunities to grow revenue, improve profitability, reduce costs, simplify the portfolio, and increase customer value.
• Monitor investments against expected outcomes and recommend adjustments when performance is below expectations.

Stakeholder Leadership & Governance

• Influence senior leaders and governance groups on product direction, priorities, investments, risks, and strategic trade-offs.
• Present clear, evidence-based strategies, roadmaps, business cases, performance insights, and recommendations to executive audiences.
• Bring stakeholders together around shared decisions and priorities, leading through influence rather than direct authority.
• Establish clear governance, decision rights, escalation paths, and outcome reporting.
• Communicate progress, dependencies, risks, issues, and decisions clearly and transparently.

Delivery, Launch & Product Performance

• Partner with Product Managers, Product Owners, architects, engineering, operations, and delivery teams to turn strategy into executable plans.
• Guide decisions on scope, sequencing, feature priorities, minimum viable products, and customer or operational trade-offs.
• Ensure solutions meet customer, business, operational, security, resilience, legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
• Lead readiness for launches, migrations, customer adoption, commercialization, and post-launch optimization.
• Track product and delivery outcomes, addressing issues when strategic objectives or expected benefits are at risk.

Risk, Vendor & Partner Management

• Maintain a clear view of product risks, including operational, financial, technology, third-party, cyber, regulatory, and market risks.
• Embed risk, compliance, security, privacy, and resilience considerations into product strategy and lifecycle decisions.
• Lead strategic vendor and partner relationships, including evaluation, due diligence, commercial negotiations, performance oversight, and roadmap alignment.
• Evaluate build, buy, partner, managed service, and platform options to determine the best approach for long-term product outcomes.
• Escalate material risks and issues with clear recommendations and options for resolution.

Product Practice & Leadership

• Mentor Product Managers and Product Owners and help strengthen strategic thinking and outcome-focused product practices.
• Help establish strong practices for discovery, roadmapping, prioritization, product metrics, lifecycle management, and executive communication.

What you’ll have:

• Significant product management experience within payments or financial services, with a strong understanding of payment products, platforms, industry participants, and the broader payments ecosystem.
• Experience navigating change within the payments industry, including modernization, emerging technologies, evolving customer expectations, and regulatory requirements.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional initiatives and influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Experience developing and presenting business cases, investment proposals, financial models, and executive recommendations.
• Strong commercial, financial, analytical, and data-driven decision-making skills.
• The ability to connect enterprise strategy and customer needs with commercial considerations, technical constraints, and delivery execution.
• Strong executive communication, presentation, negotiation, facilitation, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Experience managing complex product risks, dependencies, vendors, partners, and governance requirements.
• Experience managing a portfolio of products or services through legacy modernization and future-state transformation.
• Experience with pricing strategy, go-to-market planning, vendor selection, commercial negotiations, and managed service or SaaS models.
• Post-secondary education in business, technology, finance, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience

Salary range: $105,000-$120,000

The salary represents the job rate determined for the successful candidate who is fully competent in the role. The actual salary will vary depending on market conditions and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. 

#LI-Hybrid

Central 1 does not use Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to screen, assess, or select applicants during our recruitment process. This job posting is for an existing, specific vacancy within our organization. All applications will be considered exclusively for the position described in this posting.

Central 1 is an equal opportunity employer and committed to building an inclusive workforce by creating an environment where everyone feels like they belong and has the opportunity to be successful. We welcome all applicants to join our diverse workforce and we will provide an accessible candidate experience including, but not limited to accommodations to interview sites and alternate formats upon request to our Recruitment team.