Fintech Solution • 2026
Role: Product Manager - Research to Execution
Cross-border payroll remains one of the most friction-heavy workflows in modern finance - slow settlement windows, opaque FX spreads, layered intermediaries, and fragmented regulatory regimes turn a routine business operation into a costly liability for employers and an unreliable experience for employees. As a Product Manager, I work at the intersection of discovery and strategy in fintech to explore better ways to solve cross-border payment hiccups between foreign employers and African talent, partnering with teams to turn early signals into solutions that actually ship. My work sits at the front of that effort: answering the questions that precede engineering investment in a category this novel; should we build this, where should we build it, and how do we de-risk the path to launch.
Led discovery and commercial viability assessment for new cross-border payment products ahead of engineering investment.
Designed end-to-end solution frameworks covering payment flows, conversion mechanics, and user adoption models.
Mapped regulatory, treasury, and operational risk across target markets to inform build, pause, and scale decisions.
Built phased experimentation models that aligned leadership, compliance, finance, and engineering on a shared path forward.
Determine whether new cross-border payment solutions could responsibly serve foreign employers paying African talent - and define the markets, mechanics, and risk posture required to enter. Success meant providing leadership with a clear, evidence-based recommendation before meaningful engineering capital was committed.
Researched cross-border payment volumes, friction patterns, and adoption signals across priority corridors.
Mapped the competitive landscape to identify where Almaz could credibly differentiate.
Designed end-to-end solution architectures for payment flows, conversion, settlement, and employer treasury workflows.
Partnered with compliance and finance to map licensing requirements, settlement risk, and treasury exposure by jurisdiction.
Pressure-tested adoption hypotheses against employer and employee personas before writing a specification.
Established phased experimentation with explicit decision gates, letting leadership invest against validated learnings rather than upfront conviction.
Facilitated alignment sessions with leadership, compliance, finance, and engineering to turn ambiguity into shared operating decisions.
De-risked early-stage bets by replacing speculative investment with structured, evidence-based assessment.
Gave leadership the clarity to make a confident go/no-go call on cross-border payment opportunities.
Identified the highest-conviction payment corridors, sharpening go-to-market focus before resources were committed.
Surfaced regulatory and operational risks early, shaping a defensible compliance posture.
Established a repeatable framework for evaluating future innovation bets.
Positioned the product for scalable adoption by aligning architecture, compliance, and stakeholder expectations from inception.