Manager - Card Portfolio Optimization Consulting

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

Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) is the consulting arm of Visa, and drives tangible, impactful results for clients. Drawing on our expertise in consulting, data analytics, technology, payments and economics, VCA solves the most strategic problems for our clients.  VCA's core client segments include issuers, acquirers, merchants, fintechs, payment enablers and governments.

VCA-X is VCA's global delivery capability, designed to scale high-value solutions across Regions through multidisciplinary teams, common delivery standards, AI-enabled assets, and continuous learning from delivery. Working in partnership with Regional teams and Practice Areas, VCA-X enables consistent, efficient, and scalable delivery while maintaining client and market relevance.

Specialist & Consulting Delivery is a core pillar of the VCA-X operating model. It provides the specialist expertise, consulting delivery capacity, consulting leadership, and quality oversight required to ensure VCA-X delivers credible, consistent, and client-ready outputs.

The role operates as one of three core delivery leadership pillars within VCA-X, alongside Program Management and Data & Analytics Delivery.  It will form part of the VCA-X Leadership Team, and report directly to the Head of VCA-X.

Purpose:

• Primary focus: Own and drive portfolio strategy — lifting acquisition, activation, engagement, and incremental spend across credit and debit card portfolios.
• Core expertise: Cards portfolio optimization strategy, customer lifecycle management (CLM), and campaign management (design, targeting), with strong familiarity with payments industry rules and card-network/regulatory guidelines.

Responsibilities:

Portfolio Strategy and Performance

• Develop and refine end-to-end strategies to improve KPIs: acquisition, activation, usage, spend per active, retention, cross-/up-sell, attrition reduction, credit losses, and ROI.
• Diagnose performance drivers and recommend segment-level interventions by lifecycle stage.

Customer Lifecycle Management

• Design journeys for onboarding, early engagement, habituation, maturation, retention/win-back; define treatments and test plans (A/B and multivariate).
• Identify friction points and opportunities to accelerate first-use, repeat use, and long-term engagement across digital and partner/merchant channels.

Campaign Strategy, Design, and Execution

• Translate portfolio objectives into campaign strategies: offer constructs, eligibility, targeting rules, suppression logic, and measurement frameworks.

Insights, Analytics, and Forecasting

• Drive analytics that size opportunities and forecast impact (propensity, uplift, CLV, attrition, spend elasticities); own a disciplined test-and-learn roadmap.
• Craft clear documentation and executive-ready presentations that turn findings into decisions for senior stakeholders.

Thought Leadership and Team Contribution

• Track market trends (rewards, interchange, merchant offers, embedded finance, tokenization, BNPL, digital wallets) and turn them into portfolio interventions.
• Build the playbooks, benchmarks, and frameworks that become the reference standard for portfolio optimization across every market — not a one-off deliverable, but the thing other markets build on.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research, or a related quantitative discipline.
• 6-8 years in cards/payments, banking, or consulting with hands-on ownership of cards portfolio optimization, lifecycle programs, and campaign management.
• Experience with offer optimization, rewards strategy, merchant-funded offers, and partnerships.
• Familiarity with credit risk fundamentals (underwriting policy, line management) and their interaction with spend growth strategies.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in payments, banking, financial services, consulting, or another data-intensive industry.
• Experience with GenAI, agentic workflows, prompt-based systems, or AI-assisted analytics.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to craft executive-ready presentations and translate complex analytics into clear business decisions.
• Strong project management; ability to run multiple initiatives, set priorities, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment with disciplined documentation.
• Define the methodology, don't just execute one — thrive in a delivery model where the standard for this capability area is still being built, and where your judgment sets it.

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.