Head of Payments and Identity

ABOUT POLYMARKET Polymarket is the world's largest prediction market platform. We enable individuals to express views on real-world events by trading on outcomes across politics, economics, sports, culture, and current affairs. Built as a peer-to-peer marketplace with no centralized "house," Polymarket aggregates diverse opinions into transparent, market-based probabilities that reflect collective expectations about the future. We're growing fast – both in terms of volume ($21B traded in 2025) and adoption as an alternative news source. Our ambition is to become a ubiquitous beacon of truth in global media and we need your help adding fuel to the fire. ABOUT THE ROLE Polymarket is building Polymarket US — a fully regulated, exchange-grade product for American users. We're looking for a senior operator to own everything that touches how users get money in, stay verified, and trust the platform. You'll own the full payments and identity stack for Polymarket US — from the moment a user tries to fund their account to the moment they withdraw, and every compliance and identity checkpoint in between. This is a critical infrastructure role at the intersection of product, engineering, compliance, and external partnerships. WHAT YOU'LL DO Payments - Own all consumer and exchange payment rails end-to-end — including cards, ACH, bank transfers, wires, and stablecoins - Obsess over uptime, conversion rates, and success rates across every funding method. You will build the dashboards, set the SLAs, and own the outcomes - Understand the exchange and clearing implications of operating within a regulated environment — you should know what a clearing house is, what a DCO and DCM are, and how funding flows interact with the system as a whole - Build and maintain relationships with banks, card networks (Visa, Mastercard), and payment processors, including proactive work on fraud reduction, chargeback management, and expense management - Work cross-functionally across product, backend, and exchange teams to ensure funding flows are seamless from the user's perspective - Work with our compliance and risk teams to optimize payments in support of our users Auth & Identity - Own KYC end-to-end — including pass rates, rejection quality, and drop-off at every step of the funnel - Obsess and understand the what and the why behind rejections and false-positives - Monitor identity funnel metrics daily; run experiments to improve conversion without compromising compliance - Understand the regulatory requirements of operating as a CFTC-regulated exchange and translate them into identity requirements - Partner with compliance, legal, and external identity vendors to stay ahead of requirements WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 7+ years in payments, fintech, or financial infrastructure, ideally at a regulated exchange, neobank, or high-volume consumer fintech - Deep hands-on experience with payment rails (ACH, card, bank integrations), KYC/AML providers, and fraud tooling - You've managed real relationships with card networks or banking partners. You know who to call at Visa when there's a problem - Strong understanding of the US regulatory environment for financial products: CFTC, BSA/AML, KYC requirements - Product-minded: you read conversion funnels, run experiments, and care deeply about user experience, not just compliance checkbox-ticking - Technical enough to work closely with engineers, review APIs, and debug issues. You don't need to write Go but you should be able to read a webhook payload - Very comfortable with ambiguity and speed NICE-TO-HAVES - Experience at a CFTC-regulated entity (DCO, DCM, FCM) - Familiarity with prediction markets - Prior work with payment, risk, and compliance software such as Socure, Plaid, Stripe, Aeropay, and Checkout.com BENEFITS - Competitive salary & equity - Unlimited PTO - Full Health, Vision, & Dental coverage - 401k match - Hardware setup — new MacBook Pro, big display, & accessories