Senior Director, Business Operations-Payments

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world's work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

As Senior Director of Business Operations, you will be at the center of developing and implementing the long-term vision and direction of the Payments organization. You'll partner closely with Payments senior management to identify opportunities for growth and develop strategies and plans to achieve these goals. This is an exciting opportunity to build and grow an essential business unit within Upwork. Come help us change how the world works.

Your Responsibilities:

• Cross-functional alignment and prioritization: partners closely with VP+ stakeholders across BUs to align on priorities, influence roadmaps and deliver against key corporate initiatives and goals, including, but not limited to:
• Ensuring representation and accuracy of cross-functional initiatives in Operating Plans and Quarterly Business reviews.
• Escalating, problem solving and communicating to leadership when there are prioritization misalignments that could delay committed work.
• Tracking and ensuring on-time delivery of all action items from WBR, QBR, OP and related processes.
• Business Unit budgeting and planning: This role will be instrumental in budgeting and planning across the BU, ensuring alignment with BU leadership, tracking costs and ensuring that the team stays within its budget envelope and working with FP&A and BU leader to self-fund key initiatives through prioritization and agreement.
• Track all headcount, vendor, and service requests and assist leaders in building business cases and prioritizing to effectively enable the BU to achieve/exceed its goals.
• Strategic thinking: Think creatively and analytically and have the ability to see the big picture. Look beyond individual support and trust verticals to understand how different parts of the organization fit together; this includes the ability to identify trends and opportunities and to develop and implement effective strategies to achieve the organization's overall goals.
• Communication: Support Payments leadership in crafting and refining strategic communications, including ensuring connectivity across Payments Operating Plans and QBRs. This includes creating a communication strategy that can be understood by senior management, employees, hybrid team members, and other stakeholders - ensuring that all levels of the organization are aligned with and working towards the same goals.
• Organizational Efficiency: In this role, you'll ensure that the Payments business unit is able to optimize time, information, and decision processes by ensuring that the right information reaches the right individuals at the right time.
• Continuous Improvement/ Best Practice Implementation: Support Operations across the business unit in efforts to scale, evolve, and use resources optimally. Centralize program management functions for strategic and cross-functional initiatives.
• Analytics: Leverage data and analytics to inform decision-making and measure the impact of strategic initiatives, including ensuring that there is continuity across the QBRs and OPs of the organization's distinct business units. Establish governance for tracking of key organizational metrics and building dashboards and tools that enable regular review and continuous improvements in organizational efficiency.

What it takes to catch our eye:

• Solid experience (10+ years) in a fast paced product/technology company preferably in the two-sided marketplace/ payments/fintech space.
• Experience building and executing against new and often innovative strategies that directly connect key initiatives to measurable outcomes.
• Progressive people management, with a proven track record of building high-performing teams.
• Experience with cross-functional relationship building and partnership, and with establishing a customer-centric vision that is widely adopted.
• Exceptional communication skills. Well versed in collaborating with peers, customers, executives, and tailoring your message accordingly. You can take multiple inputs and ideas and distill them into a cohesive and measurable strategic and data-influenced message.
• The spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship: not afraid to take risks, think big, and never settle.

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