Program Manager, Bank Partnerships

About the role

Cardless is building the infrastructure that lets leading companies launch their own credit‑card products. As a Program Manager for Bank Partnerships you will own the day‑to‑day relationship with the banks that issue Cardless‑branded cards and drive new card programs from signed deal through live launch.

Key responsibilities

• Serve as the primary point of contact for issuing bank partners, managing program status, open items, approvals and escalations.
• Write partner‑facing documents such as status packages, launch trackers, escalation notes and responses to bank findings.
• Run end‑to‑end program launches, coordinating compliance, legal, product, engineering and operations to meet bank‑specific regulatory and reporting timelines.
• Build and maintain governance cadences – recurring check‑ins, steering committees and quarterly reviews – tailored to each bank’s regulator.
• Maintain obligation trackers for each bank agreement and hold internal owners accountable to dates.
• Identify friction in rewards, payments or disputes early and route issues to the appropriate owner with proposed solutions.
• Support due‑diligence, onboarding of new bank and brand partners and respond to audit requests.
• Leverage AI and automation tools to keep trackers, status packages and checklists up‑to‑date with minimal manual effort.

Required profile

• 10+ years of program management, partnership or account‑management experience at a bank, fintech or regulated payments firm.
• Direct experience interacting with banks or regulators as the accountable program lead.
• Proven ability to manage complex, multi‑stakeholder relationships across compliance, legal, product and engineering.
• Strong written communication – able to turn ambiguous situations into clear, partner‑ready documents.
• Bias toward early disclosure and comfort delivering unfavorable news proactively.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity, building processes from scratch and using data‑analytics or AI tools to improve efficiency.
• Willingness to work onsite in San Francisco office five days a week.