Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters — to you, to your community, and to the world.

Progress starts with you.

Job Description

The Senior Director, Head of Client Services for Central Europe and Eurozone Branch Operations is a leadership position within the Client Services organization, with the following responsibilities:

As Head of Client Services for Central Europe you will:

• Active participant on the CE Leadership Team, representing all Client Services functions to Country Managers and Regional Managing Director focused on delivering excellent client experience and optimizing client performance on all post sales topics in alignment with defined Client Services and the market and cluster OKRs and scorecards.
• Manages vertical and horizontal matrixed reporting across multiple teams (including other people managers, Director and below level), in order to direct the execution of operational plans and strategies, established by sub-functional leadership priorities and scorecard objectives
• Focus is on mid to long term operational plans for the team, market closely aligned with the RMD strategy (e.g., 3 to 5 years)
• Independently develops and maintains strong relationships with key Visa cross functional stakeholders, positioning Client Success as the accountable team for all post-sale and pre-renewal activities. The cluster leader must be the continuous advocate of the Visa CSM transformation effectively illustrating alignment to the Visa Sales 2.0 strategy.
• Effectively and consistently holds cross-functional stakeholders within Client Services (e.g., Onboarding and Implementation teams) accountable for delivering a best in-class client experience across each stage of client service journey, by actively and frequently highlighting gaps and pain points with proposed suggestions for an improved client experience ‘all round’, without the issue recurring and communicate with and influence executive leadership
• Responsible for managing medium to large sized projects or processes and providing direct leadership and steer and guidance to other employees across the CS functions (in market, cluster, Hub) as relevant for the requirements, and managing communication and updates to all relevant senior stakeholders
• Streamlines key strategic initiatives relating to Visa's Client Success transformation, with the aim of inspiring direct reports to enact key changes in support of the future state vision.
• Influences others within and outside Client Success functions which are not restricted to own cluster and market (within Client Services and across Visa business and product and technology functions) regarding practices, procedures and policies
• Provides thought leadership on latest global payments trends, Visa solutions, and competitive insights to provide a world-class client experience.
• Fosters relationships with senior management client stakeholders by appropriately advising clients on key actions to prioritize to maximize value realization through regular engagements with a selected set of clients, and in presentations at client forums.
• Holds direct reports accountable for their development in line with the Visa Leadership Principles and Rewards and Recognition programs, including Quarterly and Annual Reviews, as well as during regular 1 to 1 meetings to monitor progress on OKRs and goals.
• Effectively, actively and continuously coaches, reviews and delegates to lower level professionals (Direct and Matrixed reporting lines) to achieve the high impact outcomes for clients and Visa
• Owns the expense budget for CE as well as the revenue targets and the tracking of OKRs based on the multi-year Client Success transformation.
• Acts as the central escalation point, providing support to direct reports during major incident and crisis responses as needed, and act as the main escalation point on all client services and operational topics to RMD and CMs, ensuring regular executive level updates on status through the process to client, business and CS senior management.

As Head of the Eurozone Branch Operations:

• Responsible for the day-to-day operational oversight, monitoring and influencing of the functioning of the Visa European Payment System for euro denominated payments and leading on influencing the management of critical incidents and crises across other Euro denominated countries, as required. This includes:
• Participating and taking a key role in regular and ad-hoc meetings and interactions with the ECB for SIPS responsibilities, managing stakeholders at various seniority levels
• Being the Eurozone lead for Crisis Management, through existing VEL governance (Crisis Management Team)
• Be represented on key incident / crisis management governance forums to ensure the interests of the euro area (including both local and regional clients) are clearly understood, prioritised and incorporated as part of the overall management of the event, with visibility across the end-to-end lifecycle
• Engage in the scoping, development and testing of plausible (and stretch) euro-area scenarios to be tested during the Europe crisis /incident management simulations
• Engage with local and regional Client Success Managers as appropriate to fulfil this role, supporting a consistent approach and ensuring a clear feedback loop is in place
• Participate in the various forums e.g OOC, OOL and ERLC especially on strategic and risk-appetite matters to ensure representation for Eurozone clients
• Review and approve changes to existing Client Services processes (e.g Rule changes, custom license use cases, annual reviews) that are relevant for the Eurozone
• The Senior Director may also need to participate as required, in external regulatory meetings and working groups, in areas such as Cyberesilience, alongside other Eurozone branch Visa functions (e.g Risk)

Be available for international travel about 25%-30% of the time due to the global footprint of clients, direct reports and team members, as well as the Eurozone Branch responsibilities.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in managing a team of technical and professional services professionals (including people managers in a direct and matrixed reporting line), including experience in leading teams through change management.
• Demonstrated strategic leadership and ability to navigate a dynamic business environment, solving complex global cross-functional issues, evidenced by the exercise of critical thinking and sound judgement, and effectively managing executive level communication as relevant (Internal and external).
• Outstanding ability to strategically steer cross functional teams through high-impact, unprecedented, complex business and/or technical issues.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain outstanding business relationships with internal and external stakeholders at senior and executive management levels.
• Expert professional with demonstrative expertise in payment systems, including authorization and clearing systems, client connectivity, and settlement services across traditional and non-traditional payment providers and client types.
• Managing critical incidents - experience in crisis management and in executive updates to internal and external stakeholders.
• Illustrated skills and experience in business and sales processes within a B2B sales organization is highly advantageous (as a manager with sales targets).
• Demonstrated expertise of AI concepts and applications, and how they can be leveraged to create value for Visa and its clients.
• Understanding or ability to navigate Regulatory requirements in Europe region.
• Fluent German and English are required.

Expert proficiency in the following skills:

• Building client relationships. Build credibility and create trust-based relations and partner with clients to build their business.
• Becoming customer centric. Listen to and prioritize customer needs to drive value realization and build trusted partnerships.
• Success planning. Support their teams to build measurable actions plans to help clients achieve their business goals and realize value from their products and solutions by facilitating Client Success Planning workshops with senior client stakeholders at global and key clients to agree KPIs aligned to the client’s priorities (when appropriate to guide and coach team).
• Client engagement. Communicate clearly and effectively with clients including managing difficult discussions to support clients towards adherence of visa rules and compliance requirements.
• Proactiveness and critical thinking. Ability to take ownership over problems and find creative solutions to complex problems.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.