Program Manager Issuer Partnerships
Block, Inc. is a technology company building tools for economic empowerment, operating a portfolio of financial brands including Square, Cash App, Afterpay, TIDAL, Bitkey, and Proto. It serves sellers, consumers, artists, and bitcoin users through payments, banking, buy-now-pay-later, music streaming, and bitcoin self-custody and mining products.
Maintainer signals as of 8/20/2026
About Block, Inc.
Block, Inc. builds technology aimed at increasing access to the global economy. Its brands each unlock different aspects of the economy: Square makes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers; Cash App is an easy way to spend, send, and store money; Afterpay (Clearpay in the UK) helps customers manage spending over time; TIDAL is a music platform empowering artists as entrepreneurs; Bitkey is a self-custody bitcoin wallet; and Proto builds open, accessible bitcoin mining hardware and services. Block has been a long-time advocate for bitcoin, integrating bitcoin buying/selling and Lightning Network payments into Cash App and Square, funding open-source bitcoin infrastructure through Spiral (including the Lightning Development Kit), and engaging in bitcoin policy advocacy through groups like COPA, the Digital Energy Council, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and the Texas Blockchain Council. The company also runs a significant open source program (contributing to projects like Goose, an on-machine AI developer agent, OkHttp, Retrofit, gRPC, Envoy, and MySQL) and an AI research effort, including co-founding the Agentic AI Foundation with Anthropic and OpenAI. Block serves individual consumers, small and medium-sized businesses/merchants, artists, and developers.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will independently own a portfolio of issuer and processor relationships end to end from onboarding through launch and steady state, collaborating with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Legal, and Operations to deliver compliant scalable card experiences. This is a high autonomy role where you will navigate ambiguity and make decisions with limited oversight. You will drive partner onboarding and product launches including diligence, technical integration, BIN setup, network and bank approvals, pilot scope, and GA launch readiness. You will translate partner requirements into actionable internal plans and accelerate decisions. You will set milestones, surface risks early, make tradeoffs, and keep partners and internal stakeholders aligned on timelines and dependencies. You will build durable partner operating mechanisms such as SLAs, oversight reporting, incident and SEV handling protocols, and audit ready documentation. You will stay current on regulatory developments and advise senior leadership on partner selection sequencing and tradeoffs. You will communicate with clarity and apply AI for leverage, delivering concise updates to executive stakeholders and using AI tools to reduce cycle time.
Requirements
- 8+ years of program or product operations management in fintech issuing banking or payments
- Experience independently owning bank partner and or card processor relationships at a senior level
- Knowledge of card issuing economics BIN sponsorship models network rules regulatory landscape for consumer card products
- Proven track record leading complex cross functional programs through ambiguity with ownership of strategy timelines scope and risk
- Experience designing scalable program operating mechanisms governance forums SLAs oversight reporting incident response playbooks in a regulated environment
- Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills and ability to influence across executive partners and internal teams
- Builder mindset with senior judgment and comfort with ambiguity rapid iteration and hands on execution
Responsibilities
- Own a portfolio of issuer and processor relationships end to end with governance cadences and quarterly business reviews
- Drive partner onboarding and product launches including diligence technical integration BIN setup network and bank approvals pilot scope and GA launch readiness
- Translate partner requirements into actionable internal plans and accelerate decisions
- Set and drive program execution against the Issuing roadmap define milestones surface risks early
- Build durable partner operating mechanisms including SLAs oversight reporting incident handling and audit ready documentation
- Stay current on regulatory developments and advise senior leadership on partner selection sequencing and tradeoffs
- Communicate with clarity and apply AI to deliver updates and reduce cycle time
Benefits
- Remote work
- medical insurance
- flexible time off
- retirement savings plans
- modern family planning