Product Manager, Payment Rails

About us

Guru Pay is a Lithuania-based electronic money institution (EMI) offering a boutique payment experience: e-money, IBAN accounts, and domestic and cross-border payments, including SEPA, for clients across the EU and beyond. We're a regulated, small and ambitious team focused on high-quality service and long-term client success.

About the role

We're looking for a Product Manager, Payment Rails to own every external way money enters or leaves Guru Pay where the integration logic is ours. You'll start with cards (issuing first, then processing), followed by push-to-card payouts and bank correspondent integrations. You'll decide what gets built, on which rail, and whether it is ready to carry client money, working alongside the Engineering Manager, who leads the team.

This is a behind-the-scenes role with almost no client-facing screens. Our Payments Ops, Client Care and Sales teams feel your work every day, as do the card schemes, sponsors and providers we integrate with.

What you'll do:

• Take card programmes from start to go-live, using a written definition of "live": certification passed, settlement reconciled to the ledger, monitoring running, compliance sign-off recorded and a real client transaction settled
• Own the rails roadmap (card issuing and processing, push-to-card payouts such as Visa Direct and Mastercard Send, bank correspondent integrations) in dependency order, with clear visibility on what is blocked on us and what on providers or schemes
• Evaluate technical providers, keep a performance scorecard (uptime, decline rate, incidents, response times) and lead technical escalations
• Track the cost per transaction on each rail, decide which rail carries which corridor, and give Sales the cost behind pricing
• Own the certification plan (scheme, sponsor, PCI-DSS) and involve AML, Risk and Compliance from the start; plan ahead for mandatory scheme releases
• Write requirements engineers can build from: message flows, states, failure and reversal paths, limits, cut-offs and reconciliation
• Stay accountable for every rail after go-live: volumes, decline and timeout rates, approval rates, incidents and monthly run-health reporting
• Work closely with Core Banking, Payments Ops, Client Care, Sales and Compliance

• 7+ years in product management, mostly in payments, on programmes that depended on outside parties
• Experience taking a card issuing or processing programme live at a regulated firm and running it afterwards
• Experience working with several providers at once, with conflicting roadmaps
• Ability to read a scheme mandate or provider contract and explain what it commits us to
• Technical depth to discuss message flows, APIs, idempotency, reconciliation and settlement directly with engineers
• Experience owning a cost number
• Strong English communication, with engineers and non-technical colleagues alike

Nice to have

• CENTROlink experience (running SEPA payments through an EMI's own Bank of Lithuania access)
• Correspondent banking or cross-border payments
• BIN sponsorship or scheme audit experience
• Push-to-card payouts, ISO 20022 or multi-currency settlement
• Knowledge of EEA electronic-money or payment-institution regulation, including audit

• Encouragement and funds to support your learning needs
• An extra vacation day on your birthday
• Hybrid work options between the office in Vilnius and anywhere you desire
• Workations, health challenges & other types of quality time
• A team which values high standards in client care, product quality and each other