Director, Strategic Project Management

About Us
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

Team Summary

The Strategic Projects and Planning, China team leads and coordinates enterprise-wide initiatives that are critical to Visa's long-term success in China. The team connects market strategy and regulatory priorities with disciplined cross-functional execution, providing integrated leadership across business readiness, regulatory commitments, technology delivery, operational dependencies and stakeholder alignment. In doing so, it translates China-specific requirements into sustainable enterprise outcomes.

What a Director, Strategic Project Management does at Visa

This role will manage assigned projects within Visa's China Market Entry agenda. The work may include vendor/partner coordination, technology delivery, systems integration, regulatory-readiness activities, launch preparation and transition to ongoing operations.

You will develop and maintain practical project plans, track milestones and actions, and provide clear status updates. You will coordinate with business, product, technology, operations and control teams to support timely delivery of agreed project outcomes.

You will identify project risks, issues and dependencies, work with relevant owners to resolve them, and escalate matters that require management attention. Success in this role requires organized project execution, collaboration, clear communication and attention to detail.

You will act as a day-to-day project contact for internal teams and external partners, helping coordinate deliverables, dependencies, testing, readiness activities and follow-up actions. You may also support routine service-governance and operational-improvement activities after launch.

This position reports to the Vice President, Strategic Projects and Planning, China. The role is based in Visa's Shanghai office and requires business travel based on business needs.

Key Responsibilities

·       Manage assigned projects or project workstreams using clear scope, milestones, actions and delivery dates.

·       Develop and maintain project plans, schedules, status reports, decision logs, risk and issue logs, and other core project documentation.

·       Coordinate day-to-day activities across payment product, application engineering, architecture, integration, infrastructure, cybersecurity, operations, control functions and external processing partners.

·       Track deliverables and dependencies, follow up with owners and escalate overdue or blocked items through the appropriate channels.

·       Organize project meetings, prepare materials, document decisions and actions, and monitor completion of follow-up items.

·       Support requirements clarification, solution planning, integration, testing, certification, deployment and launch-readiness activities for card-processing, wallet-processing and payment-platform projects.

·       Assist with partner coordination by maintaining agreed deliverables, acceptance criteria, schedules, action items and issue tracking.

·       Prepare concise project updates for management, highlighting progress, upcoming milestones, risks, issues and decisions needed.

·       Coordinate project inputs for regulatory, legal, compliance, cybersecurity, data, operational risk, audit and control reviews.

·       Support business continuity, disaster recovery, operational-readiness and third-party dependency activities relevant to assigned projects.

·       Support cutover planning, implementation tracking, post-launch stabilization and transition of completed deliverables to operational teams.

·       Maintain effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders and contribute to a collaborative project environment.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in technology project management, application delivery, systems integration or engineering within the payments industry, including experience coordinating cross-functional technology projects.
• Experience working with domestic bank card clearing institutions in China to drive technical implementation and establish operational processes for domestic card-processing services, including systems integration, testing and certification, defining operational responsibilities and procedures, and supporting regulatory readiness and launch.
• Practical experience managing project plans, schedules, milestones, risks, issues, dependencies, actions and status reporting.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Working knowledge of project-management methods and tools, with the ability to organize work, follow up on commitments and maintain accurate documentation.
• Ability to understand payment-processing business and technical requirements, challenge assumptions, identify integration dependencies, and translate requirements into clear project activities, owners and target dates.
• Experience coordinating internal stakeholders, vendors or business partners.
• Strong understanding of payment message flows and interfaces, including ISO 8583 and ISO 20022, and the ability to review message specifications, field or data-element mappings, transaction states, response codes and integration-test scenarios.
• Deep knowledge of bank-card processing across authorization, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, exception handling and dispute-related processing, with a strong understanding of issuer, acquirer, merchant, processor and network interactions.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to prepare concise updates and communicate with stakeholders at different levels.
• Ability to work effectively in a matrixed environment, manage multiple priorities and escalate issues appropriately.

What Will Also Help:

• Strong practical experience in card payments, digital payments, payment processing or payment-platform delivery within a bank, payment network, processor, acquirer, issuer, wallet provider or financial-technology company.
• Deep understanding of wallet processing, including wallet account and credential lifecycle, card provisioning, tokenization, transaction routing, authorization, funding, settlement, reconciliation and exception handling.
• Experience integrating with payment networks, banks, processors, wallet platforms, merchants or other external payment-technology partners.
• Understanding of payment-platform non-functional requirements, including availability, performance, scalability, resiliency, security, data protection, Professional proficiency in English and Mandarin Chinese.

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.