Location: Madrid (Payments Hub)
Business Unit: PagoNxt – Payments Hub
WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER THIS OPPORTUNITY
PagoNxt is a global payments company wholly owned by Santander, combining the agility of a fintech with the scale and resilience of a Tier-1 financial institution. Within PagoNxt, Payments Hub is a cloud-native, multi-region payments processing platform serving multiple Santander Group banks and selected external institutions.
As Payments Hub expands globally, the complexity of customer implementations has increased significantly: multi-country rollouts, deep integrations with legacy systems, demanding change management and accelerated time-to-market expectations.
To address these challenges, PagoNxt has created a Professional Services capability to professionalize and scale the implementation of Payments Hub across customers and geographies. The Director of Professional Services plays a key strategic role in ensuring successful, efficient and low-risk implementations, while protecting Product and Engineering capacity and reinforcing governance and delivery standards.
This role offers a unique opportunity to lead a global Professional Services function at scale, directly impacting customer success, platform adoption and PagoNxt’s growth strategy.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
As Director of Professional Services, your main responsibilities will be:
Professional Services Strategy & Governance
* Define the global implementation strategy for the Payments Hub, establishing a common methodology for implementation, integration and testing across all customers and geographies.
* Ensure consistent governance of Payments Hub implementation projects, with strong focus on risk management, dependency control, decision-making and clear escalation paths.
* Design and continuously evolve the Target Operating Model (ToM) for Payments Hub implementations, covering the full lifecycle from delivery to post-go-live handover and operations.
Implementation Delivery
* Ensure successful, timely and high-quality implementations of Payments Hub for customers, reducing time-to-market and operational risk.
* Oversee end-to-end implementation lifecycle:
* Pre-sale / Proofs of Design (PdP) support
* Project execution
* Integration and UAT coordination
* Post-implementation stabilization
* Act as an escalation point for complex customer implementations and delivery risks.
Organisational Leadership & Capability Building
* Build and lead a global Professional Services team, capable of supporting and complementing CSO organisations where local capacity or expertise is limited.
* Define the operating model between:
* Global Professional Services team
* CSO organisations
* Product, Engineering and Platform teams
Integration & Change Management
* Drive the centralisation and rationalisation of integration approaches, promoting reuse of components and reducing customer-specific developments.
* Oversee integration components and testing capabilities to:
* Accelerate UAT
* Reduce implementation risk
* Improve consistency across customers
* Ensure change management is treated as a core implementation discipline, minimizing post-go-live inefficiencies and responsibility gaps.
Stakeholder Management
* Work closely with CSOs, Product, Engineering, Operations and Senior Management.
* Act as a key interface with Santander Group entities and strategic customers during complex implementations.
* Communicate clearly on delivery status, risks, dependencies and outcomes at executive level.
EXPERIENCE
* 15+ years of experience in Professional Services, Implementation, Delivery or Consulting roles in complex technology environments.
* Proven experience leading large-scale, multi-country implementations, preferably in payments or financial services.
* Strong background in project-driven organisations with multiple stakeholders and dependencies.
* Experience building and scaling global delivery or professional services teams.
EDUCATION
* Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Business or similar field.
* MBA or postgraduate studies in Management or Technology (desirable).
SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE
* Large experience in Payments/Banking industry (mandatory)
* Strong leadership and organisational skills, with ability to operate at both strategic and execution level.
* Deep understanding of payments, integrations and platform-based delivery models.
* Solid experience in governance, risk management and delivery assurance.
* Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including executive-level interactions.
* Strong change management mindset and ability to drive adoption in complex customer environments.
* Structured, data-driven and outcome-oriented approach.
* Advanced English required