Senior Payments Resiliency Strategy Consultant

Title: Senior Payments Resiliency Strategy Consultant

Location: Charlotte, NC or New York, NY (Onsite).

Type: Contract

Role Overview:

• Our client, a leading US-based financial institution, is seeking a Senior Payments Resiliency Strategy Consultant to support enterprise initiatives focused on strengthening the resiliency, continuity, and recoverability of the bank's critical payments infrastructure and operations.
• This role is targeted toward professionals currently operating within banking, payments organizations, or consulting firms with deep experience across payment rails, clearing and settlement operations, and regulatory resiliency expectations.
• The selected candidate will partner with senior stakeholders across Payments, Treasury, Operations, Risk, and Technology organizations to design and execute strategic programs ensuring high availability and continuity of payment services across domestic and cross-border networks.

Key Responsibilities:

• Payments Resiliency Strategy
• Lead the development and execution of enterprise payments resiliency strategy and roadmap.
• Assess resilience across critical payment flows, including clearing, settlement, liquidity movement, and transaction processing.
• Define target operating models that strengthen recovery capabilities and reduce disruption risk across payment services.
• Establish resilience standards and frameworks for critical payment platforms and processing environments.

Critical Payment Infrastructure Continuity

• Lead resiliency initiatives across key payment rails and networks, including:
• Fedwire
• CHIPS
• RTP and FedNow
• SWIFT and cross-border payment channels
• Card and digital payment processing environments
• Identify single points of failure across payment processing workflows.
• Define high availability, redundancy, and failover strategies for payment systems.
• Enhance liquidity resiliency and intraday funding continuity during disruption scenarios.

Program Leadership & Transformation

• Lead enterprise payments resiliency programs including:
• Payment platform recovery and failover modernization
• Operational readiness and recovery planning
• Payment flow mapping and critical service identification
• Third-party payment service resiliency assessment
• Establish governance models, resiliency KPIs, and program oversight frameworks.
• Support multi-year payments transformation initiatives focused on reliability and stability.

Executive Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leadership across Payments, Risk, Operations, and Technology.
• Provide executive-level reporting, risk insights, and strategic recommendations.
• Lead cross-functional working groups and enterprise resiliency forums.

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in banking, payments, or financial services consulting.
• Deep expertise in payment operations, clearing and settlement processes, and payment infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of US payment rails (Fedwire, CHIPS, RTP, FedNow) and cross-border payment networks.
• Demonstrated experience leading payments transformation or resiliency programs.
• Strong understanding of payment operational risk and continuity planning.
• Proven ability to engage and influence executive stakeholders.
• Strong program leadership and advisory experience.