Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Payward Services is an enterprise infrastructure platform that enables companies to seamlessly integrate trading, payments, funding, and digital asset services through a single unified system. It provides coordinated liquidity, custody, compliance, risk management, and settlement capabilities, reducing operational complexity for fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers.

Payward's Payments & Blockchain team builds the capabilities that move money into and out of its products, connecting banking partners, payment providers and local rails for millions of users.

We're building a peer-to-peer marketplace for Asia-Pacific that lets users buy and sell digital assets directly with each other using familiar local payment methods. Payward will provide the marketplace infrastructure, merchant network, escrow, transaction management, and trust and safety capabilities.

We're looking for an experienced product leader who has launched crypto P2P in APAC and can turn that expertise into a shared platform serving multiple Payward products.

The Opportunity & Scope

Strategy and market expansion: Set the P2P vision, business objectives and roadmap. Prioritize markets, customer segments and payment methods based on demand, competitive conditions, economics and regulatory requirements.
Merchant network and liquidity: Develop the merchant acquisition, onboarding, incentives and retention strategy. Work with commercial and local teams to build dependable liquidity, competitive pricing and coverage across relevant payment methods.
Marketplace economics: Define fee structures and incentive programs. Set commercial targets and improve revenue, transaction costs and contribution margin with finance and commercial partners.
Core P2P capabilities: Lead product development across matching, escrow, order management, payment confirmation, transaction limits, merchant controls and dispute handling.
Platform adoption: Build reusable capabilities and integration requirements that allow multiple Payward products to offer P2P. Make the platform straightforward to integrate, operate and extend into new markets.
Buyer, seller and merchant requirements: Define transaction workflows, exception handling and acceptance criteria. Bring customer research and marketplace expertise into interface decisions, and use transaction data to identify friction and improve completion.
Trust and marketplace integrity: Partner with risk, compliance, legal and operations to build merchant verification, fraud prevention, dispute resolution and appeals into the product from the outset.
Launch and operating performance: Lead cross-functional launch planning and establish the processes needed to run each market. Track liquidity, order completion, time to trade, repeat usage, dispute rates, fraud losses and platform reliability.
Product leadership: Align senior stakeholders around priorities and tradeoffs, work closely with engineering on system capabilities, and develop product talent as the platform scales. Apply proven P2P playbooks and move quickly from decisions to live transactions.

Candidate Profile & Mindset

A demonstrated record of launching and scaling a crypto P2P marketplace in APAC, ideally including a launch from zero.
Senior product leadership experience with responsibility for strategy, roadmaps and measurable commercial outcomes.
Deep understanding of merchant operations, two-sided liquidity, pricing, incentives and the economics of P2P trading.
Practical knowledge of APAC payment methods, local banking and wallet ecosystems, and how customer behavior differs across markets.
Experience building shared platform capabilities used by multiple products, channels or external partners.
Strong judgment about fraud, payment verification, transaction disputes and the operational realities of running a financial marketplace.
Technical fluency across APIs, transaction lifecycles, payment integrations and reliable financial systems.
The ability to influence senior stakeholders and lead through partnerships with engineering, interface product teams, operations, risk and commercial teams.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Qualifications

Experience expanding P2P across several APAC markets.
Experience with stablecoins and local fiat on/off-ramps.
Experience building and leading product teams.
Fluency in one or more APAC languages.

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

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Senior Director of Product - P2P Marketplace & Platform