Senior Product Manager, Payments Strategy & Growth

Accela provides cloud-based government software solutions that improve efficiency, citizen engagement, and community development. The Senior Product Manager, Payments Strategy & Growth will identify and validate growth opportunities for Accela’s Payments portfolio, develop business cases, support go-to-market execution, and drive customer adoption. The role also partners with Sales, Marketing, Engineering, delivery product teams, and external payment stakeholders to inform roadmap priorities and payments innovation.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute payments expertise, market analysis, and recommendations that support the established vision, positioning, growth strategy, and business objectives for Accela’s Payments portfolio. Identify and assess market opportunities, emerging trends, competitive threats, regulatory changes, partner opportunities, and potential growth investments within the established Payments portfolio strategy
• Conduct market research, TAM assessments, buyer segmentation, customer validation, win/loss analysis, and competitive intelligence. Develop business cases, investment recommendations, adoption plans, pricing inputs, revenue models, and executive-ready portfolio recommendations
• Serve as Accela’s payments subject matter expert across payment providers, merchant services, payment facilitation, gateways, digital wallets, fraud prevention, settlement, reconciliation, PCI, and emerging fintech capabilities. Lead execution of approved go-to-market plans, including messaging, positioning, launch planning, sales enablement, customer-facing narratives, ROI materials, and competitive battlecards
• Partner with Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Support, Professional Services, partners, and executive leadership to support pipeline, expansion, customer adoption, and strategic sales opportunities. Build relationships with customers, prospects, payment providers, fintech partners, and industry stakeholders
• Assess build, buy, partner, and acquisition opportunities and provide recommendations that support payments innovation, revenue growth, and customer value. Identify and recommend opportunities to use AI for fraud detection, transaction intelligence, payment optimization, customer assistance, market insights, operational efficiency, and portfolio decision-making
• Partner with the delivery product team and Engineering to provide market context, customer validation, recommendations, and success metrics that inform roadmap prioritization and execution
• Track and communicate key outcomes including adoption, revenue growth, retention, customer satisfaction, market penetration, portfolio performance, and business impact
• Lead as a Product Owner on the SCRUM team, own roadmap, prioritizing the backlog, dependency management, go to market strategy, and cross departmental education

Requirements:

• 7+ years of Product Management experience in enterprise software or SaaS
• 5+ years of direct payments industry experience
• Deep knowledge of payment ecosystems, payment providers, merchant acquiring, payment gateways, digital wallets, fraud management, settlement, reconciliation, payment orchestration, and payment compliance
• Experience bringing products to market, supporting sales teams, and driving customer adoption
• Strong understanding of PCI requirements, payment regulations, risk management, and fraud prevention practices
• Experience conducting market research, competitive analysis, strategic planning, and business case development
• Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders and lead cross-functional initiatives through data-driven recommendations
• Strong communication, presentation, storytelling, and stakeholder management skills
• Technical understanding of APIs, integrations, cloud platforms, and SaaS architectures
• Experience using AI, analytics, and data-driven decision-making to improve product strategy and business outcomes
• Experience working with State and Local Government, GovTech, or Civic Technology
• Experience with payment facilitation, embedded payments, payment orchestration, ACH, card processing, and alternative payment methods
• Experience leading portfolio strategy, growth initiatives, strategic planning, or investment governance