Director, Rules Governance and Transformation

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

The Ecosystem Program Transformation & Automation (EPTA) function within Payment Ecosystem Risk & Controls (PERC) drives the modernization, scalability, and effectiveness of Visa’s global risk programs. The team focuses on transforming how risk programs are designed, governed, operationalized, and enabled through technology, automation, and data‑led insights to protect the integrity of the payment ecosystem, strengthen trust, and enable secure growth by helping evolve risk programs and processes across regions.

Visa Rules are mandatory operating standards and enforcement requirements that govern how participants in the Visa payment ecosystem conduct business. They define rights, responsibilities, prohibitions, and consequences to protect the integrity, security, and reliability of the network. The Visa Rules Self‑Assessment (VRSA) framework is an important initiative that provides a standardized approach for assessing Visa Rules to ensure they remain fit for purpose, aligned with Visa's strategy, and supported by effective compliance and enforcement mechanisms. It enables Visa to proactively identify opportunities to strengthen governance, simplify requirements, address compliance gaps, and improve the overall effectiveness of the Rules framework.

This leadership role is accountable for the strategic direction, governance, operational effectiveness, and continuous evolution of Visa Rules Self-Assessment (VRSA), ensuring that Visa Rules remain fit for purpose and aligned with Visa's business, risk, compliance, and ecosystem objectives. This role provides enterprise-wide leadership to strengthen Visa Rules governance, drive operational excellence, improve consistency of decision-making, and enable scalable transformation through process, data, automation, and emerging technologies. The role will also be responsible for building a scalable future-state operating model and automation readiness across Ecosystem Program Transformation & Automation (EPTA) and Payment Ecosystem Risk & Controls (PERC) initiatives.

This role is critical to ensure:

• Visa Rules requirements remain clear, enforceable, and aligned with strategic objectives.

• Governance, risk, operations, and technology remain effectively aligned across an increasingly complex ecosystem.

• Automation and AI-enabled capabilities are deployed responsibly and transitioned successfully into business-as-usual operations.

This role includes people leadership responsibilities, overseeing and developing a small, high‑impact team and guiding delivery in support of Visa’s strategic and operational objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• In partnership with Senior Director, define strategy, target outcomes and roadmap for Visa Rules Self-Assessment (VRSA). Drive socialization, alignment and end‑to‑end execution, including executive readouts and addressing questions.

• Act as a liaison between senior stakeholders, rule owners, PERC and EPTA leadership and manage trade-offs and escalations.

• Support and evolve Visa Rules inquiries ensuring efficient and high-quality responses as well as defined escalation paths for resolution of complex inquiries.

• Develop and present executive communication with clear, concise insights on VRSA outcomes and trends, process improvement impacts and readiness of automation and AI initiatives.

• Drive continuous process improvement and operational excellence for VRSA, Rules Inquiries and adjacent EPTA workflows. Examples include playbooks, process artefacts, process flows, RACI, etc.

• Support automation and AI initiative enablement, acting as a senior operational partner to EPTA and Technology teams. Drive alignment on governance and control expectations, support change management and adoption, enable the transition of solutions into BAU.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in the office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager. 

Qualifications

• 10 years of work experience with a bachelor’s degree; or 8 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD)

• Demonstrated experience leading and developing high-performing teams, including performance management and coaching

• Strong interpersonal skills and proven abilities in negotiating and influencing internal and external clients

• Strong written and verbal communications skills, ability to convey complex topics in an audience-centric way

• Strong analytical aptitude and experience leveraging data, analytics, and performance metrics to drive business decisions, operational improvements, and transformation initiatives.

• Experience leading business transformation, operating model improvement, or technology-enabled change initiatives managing complex stakeholder environments, and drive alignment across multiple functions or regions.

• Proven ability to lead complex, cross‑functional initiatives, balancing competing priorities across regions and stakeholders

• Experience gathering business requirements and translating needs into successful deliverables

• Ability to effectively work under pressure and adhering to tight deadlines

• Great time management skills, ability to set priorities and manage expectations, and work both as part of a team and independently

• Visa experience or in-depth knowledge of the payment solutions industry is highly desired – including but not limited to Card Payments, ACH or Push Payments and knowledge of the Visa Rules highly desired

• Experience with AI tools is a great plus

Personal Characteristics

• Possesses a growth mindset and is eager to take on new challenges

• Strong ownership, accountability, and resilience while navigating ambiguity and competing priorities, comfortable adapting to change and different environments

• Focus towards action and overcoming barriers and finding solutions

• Good judgment – ability to operate independently and knowing when / how much to involve leadership

• Decisive with ability to balance big picture and details in decision making

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.