Senior Product Manager - Payments

About Pleo Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’. The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years. Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together. About the role The Payments platform is the backbone of not just our product, but our entire company. Our payment solutions cover card transactions, wallet top-ups, invoice payments, reimbursements, and more. Within Payments, the Financial Core team is the engine room. We are responsible for the critical infrastructure that manages our customers' funds: building robust e-money accounts, maintaining an immutable and highly scalable financial ledger, and ensuring bulletproof safeguarding and automated reconciliation processes. Our goal is straightforward: to create financial architecture that is seamless, compliant, and rock-solid. Every single cent matters, and we are here to ensure absolute precision. We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to join our Financial Core team at Pleo. In this role, you'll lead a dedicated engineering team, bridging the gap between complex financial regulation, deep backend systems architecture, and product experience. Who you’ll be working with and reporting to You’ll report directly to our Product Director for Payments and work closely with other teams across the Payments domain. You’ll also partner heavily with internal stakeholders in Finance, Treasury, Compliance, and Legal to ensure our financial infrastructure meets both business growth targets and strict regulatory standards. What you’ll be doing As Senior Product Manager for Financial Core, you will: Set direction: Work with your team, Treasury, Finance, and leadership to shape the long-term vision for Pleo’s ledger infrastructure and e-money architecture. Drive financial integrity: Define and track KPIs focused on ledger accuracy, reconciliation automation rates, and system uptime, keeping your team aligned with Pleo's scale. Solve deep technical and regulatory problems: Tackle highly complex backend problems. You will design systems that gracefully handle multi-currency accounting, real-time balance updates, and strict European safeguarding compliance rules. Collaborate deeply: Partner with Engineering Managers, Treasury leads, and financial auditors to ensure smooth delivery, continuous architecture evolution, and audit readiness. What you bring You’ll thrive in this role if you: Have deep fintech/banking expertise: Possess proven experience in the European financial services sector, specifically focused on e-money institutions (EMIs), core banking systems, financial ledgers, and safeguarding/reconciliation mechanics. Speak "Finance" and "Engineering" fluently: You can comfortably discuss EMI regulatory requirements with compliance officers, and then dive into database isolation levels, event-driven architecture, or API design with backend engineers. Care deeply about precision: You understand that in financial core systems, a rounding error or a delayed reconciliation is a critical failure. You bring a meticulous approach to edge cases and race conditions. Rely on data and systems thinking: Balance big-picture financial strategy with the ability to zoom in on day-to-day technical data flows and transaction logging. Are an active individual contributor: Drive to stay hands-on, actively mapping out transaction lifecycles, writing clear technical requirements, and leading by example. Thrive in evolution: Enjoy working in a fast-paced environment where scaling a platform to handle millions of transactions cleanly is an exciting challenge. How you’ll develop in this role In your first 3-6 months, you’ll: Map and validate the end-to-end money flow, ledger entries, and banking partner reconciliation loops at Pleo. Define and align the product strategy for your team. Deliver and refine your roadmap continuously. Work closely with engineers to continue optimising ways of working. As you grow, you’ll have the chance to: Scale your impact across other teams in Payments. Build and mentor