Program Manager, New Initiatives & GTM

Position Summary:

The Program Manager, New Initiatives & GTM role sits within the Global Travel Customer Operations & Success organization and owns the end to end delivery of go-to-market (GTM) programs and the non-technical work streams of the product life cycle for our B2B Travel payment products. This role is the driving force behind bringing major customer initiatives, strategic partnerships, and regional growth opportunities to market. Through flawless end-to-end cross functional execution this role will drive commercial outcomes, and regional expansion programs to capture revenue growth This position directly leads a dedicated team of Project Managers, establishing robust governance frameworks and process design to optimize launch readiness while managing cross-functional alignment across Product, Commercial, Technology, Operations, Risk and Finance. The Senior Program Manager will ensure milestone tracking, and delivery excellence across all in-flight travel initiatives.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Strategic GTM Project Delivery & Execution (30%):

- Drive global go-to-market execution for complex B2B Travel payment initiatives, translating strategic growth objectives into actionable, cross-functional program roadmaps
- Own the delivery governance framework for GTM and non-technical product lifecycle workstreams, engaging senior stakeholders and steering committees across Legal, Regulatory, Risk, Finance, Commercial, Operations, Tech, and Marketing to ensure organizational alignment and seamless delivery.
- Partner with Product Management to translate roadmap milestones into actionable delivery and launch plans that maximize commercial adoption and revenue realization.
- Track GTM readiness across markets, ensuring launch dependencies, risks, and stakeholder sign-offs are resolved ahead of go-live to protect revenue timelines and commercial commitments.

Product Lifecycle Delivery (25%):

- Lead the non-technical workstreams of the product lifecycle - including operational readiness, documentation, training, communications, and compliance sign-off - for travel initiatives.
- Act as the delivery point of contact between Product, Operations, Commercial, Finance, Regulatory and Risk teams, ensuring dependencies are tracked and risks escalated in a timely manner.
- Maintain delivery plans, RAID logs, and status reporting for all in-flight product-related initiatives.

Operational Excellence & Process Optimization (20%):

- Collaborate with Operations and cross-functional teams to drive operational excellence, targeting repetitive, low-value work and redesigning operating routines so AI and digital agents handle first-pass coordination and workflow automation.
- Maintain close stakeholder alignment across the organization to streamline the end-to-end customer journey, accelerating delivery while preserving human accountability for risk.
- Actively monitor post-launch performance to ensure delivered initiatives achieve their intended operational and commercial benefits.
- Establish standardized GTM playbooks, program governance structures, risk/compliance review mechanisms, and launch readiness criteria across all global travel initiatives.

Insight-Driven Delivery (15%):

- Partner with the Insights and Analytics team, leveraging travel transaction data, customer behavior, and market trends, to translate findings into practical delivery and coordination actions.
- Design AI-assisted workflows to accelerate the synthesis of complex market and transaction data, ensuring teams treat AI outputs as inputs to interrogate and establishing clear guardrails for when human judgment must override automated recommendations.

Team Leadership & Program Governance (10%):

- Directly manage, mentor, and develop a team of Project Managers - setting priorities, allocating work, and supporting career growth as the team scales.
- Serve as the primary escalation point for delivery risk, with authority to make trade-off calls on sequencing, resourcing, and prioritization within the delivery plan.
- Present program status, commercial risk, and delivery trade-offs directly to senior leadership.
- Ensure rigorous tracking of milestones, risk mitigation, and stakeholder reporting for all in-flight travel delivery initiatives under your remit.

How You'll Engage:

• Strategic Mindset: Understand our corporate strategy, the competitive travel environment, and market trends to identify how our payment pathways can create unique commercial value, translating that understanding into delivery and coordination plans that keep initiatives on track.
• Customer Obsessed: Deeply understand the needs of major Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), travel management companies, and global travel suppliers. Anticipate their requirements for reliability, reach, reconciliation, and risk protection, while ensuring delivery preserves an intuitive, high-quality, and frictionless end-user experience.
• Results Focused: Successfully coordinate delivery of shared plans with top customers, maximize value from strategic partnerships, and scale our product offering into new geographies to achieve ambitious net revenue growth targets.
• Insights Driven: Utilize qualitative and quantitative insights from customer interactions, transaction data, and performance reports to inform delivery prioritization and sequencing decisions.
• Trusted Partner: Act as the trusted coordination point between the commercial market, Product, Operations, Finance, and Risk - orchestrating capabilities delivered by specialized internal teams, including Core Processing, Global Funding, Treasury Operations, and Fraud Mitigation, to deliver bespoke travel outcomes.
• Change Enablement: Act as a catalyst for cross-functional change. Utilize delivery milestones, process re-engineering, and automation initiatives to actively guide internal teams through systemic or operational shifts, managing stakeholder impacts and minimizing friction to accelerate delivery.
• Relevant Expertise: Bring domain expertise in B2B payments, virtual cards, commercial credit, international cross-border transactions, and program/project delivery.
• People Leadership: Directly manage and develop a team of Project Managers, setting clear priorities and creating an environment for growth and strong delivery performance.
• AI & Agentic Tooling: Actively embed AI into planning, coordination, and delivery workflows to replace low-level manual effort. Redesign workflows around human-plus-agent collaboration, ensuring accountability remains human.
• Global Flexibility: Operate effectively across a global, multi-time-zone stakeholder base, adapting working hours day to day and week to week as needed to maintain alignment with regional teams and partners.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities:

Required Experience

- 8–10+ years of professional experience in Program/Project Management, Delivery Coordination, Commercial Operations, or GTM Execution.
- Proven people leadership experience, having directly managed and mentored a team (e.g., Project Managers).
- Deep knowledge of the B2B Travel ecosystem (OTAs, TMCs, airlines, hotels) and associated commercial payment flows.
- Proven capability in influencing and driving cross-functional teams (Product, Operations, Commercial, Finance, Risk, Legal) without direct hierarchical authority over those business units.
- Excellent stakeholder management and senior executive presentation skills.
- Demonstrated ability to translate roadmaps and business strategies into actionable, delivery-focused milestones.

Preferred Experience

- Familiarity with virtual card networks (VCNs), closed-loop payments, and card scheme partnerships.
- PMP, PgMP, or equivalent program/project management certification.
- Experience implementing operational, regulatory, or risk-based process improvements across global regions.
- Experience running or scaling a PMO function.

Travel/Overtime Requirements (Please check all that apply)

Travel - 10%

Overnight Travel - 10%

Overtime Frequency - Nights/out of Business Hours - 15%

Weekends 0%

Holidays 0%

*Note:* *This is a global role supporting stakeholders, partners, and initiatives across multiple regions and time zones. As a result, working hours may vary day to day and week to week to accommodate global collaboration, and periodic early morning or evening meetings should be expected.*

*Disclaimer:* *This description may not be exhaustive of all of the possible responsibilities, tasks, duties and/or qualifications of the role and the Company reserves the right to assign other responsibilities, tasks, duties and/or qualifications from time to time in the future in accordance with applicable law.*