Director of Payments

Title: Director of Payments Location: Hybrid - San Francisco, California; Remote - United States

Oura is exploring how the ring can extend beyond biometrics into everyday utility. Payments will be extending Oura's tap-to-pay capability; transit is an additional vertical this role will help manage in the future. We're evaluating and building toward in-ring payment capability, and we need a Director of Business Development to own the commercial partnerships that will make it real: identifying and securing ecosystem relationships, structuring the commercial terms, and driving go-to-market execution as the capability comes online. This is a build role. You'll source and develop relationships with card issuers, build the business case internally and externally, and lead negotiations from first conversation through signed agreement and launch. The work is still early — you'll be shaping the partnership strategy and playbook as much as executing against one.

What You Will Do:

• Build and prioritize a qualified pipeline of card issuers, networks, processors, wallet platforms, and future transit partners.
• Secure signed issuer partnership agreements with strong commercial terms ahead of Oura’s tap-to-pay launch.
• Develop and execute partner-specific go-to-market plans covering co-marketing, enrollment, activation incentives, adoption, and usage.
• Establish clear cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Legal, and Marketing on partner requirements, technical dependencies, and launch sequencing.
• Create the commercial operating model for Payments, including pipeline reporting, partnership economics, activation and usage targets, and P&L visibility.
• Manage partnerships through launch and scale, resolving adoption or technical friction and identifying renewal and expansion opportunities.
• Build a clear strategy and partnership roadmap for extending Oura’s tap-to-pay capability into transit.

Open to SFO and NY - Note these are two geos where most issuers are concentrated.

What you'll bring

• 10+ years of global experience in payments, wallets, fintech, or adjacent ecosystem partnerships.
• Direct experience working with card issuers, networks, processors, wallet platforms, or comparable payments partners.
• Demonstrated ownership of complex partnerships from sourcing and business-case development through commercial negotiation, contracting, launch, and expansion.
• Strong understanding of the payments ecosystem, including issuer, processor, and network roles; interchange economics; and relevant regulatory considerations.
• Experience structuring commercial models involving co-marketing funding, activation incentives, exclusivity, tiering, and revenue or interchange-sharing economics.
• Proven ability to build a new partnership function or playbook in an early-stage, ambiguous environment.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to translate external partner needs into clear priorities for Product, Engineering, Legal, and Marketing.
• Executive-level communication and influence, including presenting business cases to senior leadership and representing the company with partner executives.
• Ability to travel periodically for partner meetings, industry events, and internal offsites

Nice to have:

• Experience launching a new payment, wallet, or tap-to-pay capability from pre-launch through go-to-market and scale.
• Background in wearables, consumer hardware, consumer technology, or digital health.
• Existing senior-level relationships across card issuers, networks, processors, wallets, mobility, or transit organizations.
• Experience developing adoption strategies, including enrollment flows, activation incentives, co-marketing, and usage growth.
• Experience managing partnership economics and performance, including revenue share, interchange, marketing investment, and P&L reporting.
• International payments experience and familiarity with launching capabilities across multiple markets.

Benefits

At Ōura, we care about you and your well-being. Everyone here at Ōura has a ring of their own and we are continually looking to improve employee health.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and equity packages
• Health, dental, vision insurance, and mental health resources
• An Ōura Ring of your own plus employee discounts for friends & family
• 20 days of paid time off plus 13 paid holidays plus 8 days of flexible wellness time off
• Paid sick leave and parental leave

Ōura takes a market-based approach to pay, which may vary depending on your location. US locations are categorized into tiers based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. While most offers will be closer to the starting range, successful candidates' pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, internal peer equity, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Region 1 $200,600- $236,000

Region 2 $182,750- $215,000

Region 3 $164,900- $194,000

A recruiter can determine your Region based on your US location.

We are not considering candidates residing in the following states: Alaska (AK), Delaware (DE), Iowa (IA), Mississippi (MS), Nebraska (NE), South Dakota (SD), West Virginia (WV), and Wisconsin (WI).