Payment Operations Specialist, Technical Operations

Payment Operations Specialist, Technical Operations

Department: Payment Operations  |  Location: Remote — United States  |  Reports To: Senior Manager, Payment Operations

Position Overview: 

The Payment Operations Specialist, Technical Operations supports daily payment operations across multiple processors and regions for FastSpring's network of more than 2,500 sellers. The role pairs hands-on operational work — chargeback and PayPal dispute support, issue investigation, and seller-facing resolution — with technical operations analytics across five areas: authorization rates, chargeback rates, data normalization, processing costs, and reconciliation support. It is an entry-to-early-career position for someone curious about how payments work, comfortable in a spreadsheet, and inclined to chase down a number that looks wrong.

Within a year, this person should own recurring analysis in at least one of those five areas, handle disputes independently, and be the person others ask when a number doesn't reconcile — a path that leads toward senior payment operations, payments analytics, or risk and fraud. Payments is a field you learn by doing, and we welcome candidates from varied backgrounds and career paths; curiosity and analytical instinct matter more here than a specific résumé.

Responsibilities & Goals:

• Support chargeback and PayPal dispute workflows — case review, evidence gathering, and representment preparation under guidance from senior team members — and coordinate with sellers and internal teams to collect supporting documentation.
• Monitor chargeback volumes, win rates, and fraud ratios against card network thresholds by seller, processor, and MID, and analyze disputes by reason code, product, and geography to separate fraud from service or billing causes.
• Investigate Tier I–II payment inquiries involving authorizations, declines, settlements, refunds, disputes, or processor behavior; escalate complex cases and maintain clear handoff notes, including for weekend coverage.
• Track authorization approval and decline rates across processors, regions, and payment methods, breaking declines down by response code and category to pinpoint where approvals are being lost.
• Normalize payment data across sources — processor response codes, decline and chargeback categories, and reporting definitions — and run routine data-quality checks so figures from different systems are comparable.
• Track what payments actually cost by processor and region — interchange, scheme fees, acquirer markup, FX, and dispute fees — and check processor invoices and fee statements against expected rates, flagging anomalies or misapplied pricing.
• Support daily and monthly reconciliation across platform records, processor reports, and bank statements, investigating unmatched items and contributing to the reporting and SOPs that surface payment performance, cost, and dispute trends across the organization.

Experience & Qualifications:

• 1+ years of experience in payment operations, chargebacks, risk operations, customer support operations, finance operations, ecommerce operations, or a related field; experience in SaaS, digital goods, ecommerce, fintech, marketplace, or subscription businesses is a plus.
• Basic understanding of card payments, payment processors, PayPal, refunds, disputes, or the chargeback lifecycle; hands-on experience and exposure to merchant-of-record environments are preferred but not required.
• Comfort working with data, dashboards, spreadsheets, and exported reports — able to pull a data set apart, summarize it, and tell when the result looks wrong.
• Curiosity about why a number moved and the persistence to find out, paired with strong attention to detail and a clear sense of accountability.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple tasks across systems and queues while following documented processes accurately.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to ask good questions and document work carefully enough for someone else to pick it up.
• Willingness and ability to work a schedule that includes weekends, with two weekdays off.

Technology & Systems:

• Comfortable in spreadsheets (Excel or Google Sheets); familiarity with reporting or BI tools such as Looker, Tableau, or Power BI is preferred.
• Exposure to SQL, Python, APIs, or observability tools — or a genuine appetite to learn them.
• Experience using AI tools such as Claude or ChatGPT to assist with documentation, data cleanup, research, and workflow improvement.
• Familiarity with processor portals, settlement files, or other reconciliation and accounting-adjacent workflows is a plus; we expect these tools to be learned on the job rather than mastered on arrival.