Reporting to the Vice President, Value Delivery Product, the Director, Acquirer APIs & Services will lead product strategy and execution for a portfolio of acquiring capabilities spanning merchant onboarding and maintenance, disputes, reconciliation and more.
This role sits within the broader Acquirer Value Delivery . The Director will own the products and capabilities themselves - what they do, how they work, how they evolve, and how they create value - while partnering with Value Delivery on investment, value narrative, go-to-market readiness, and adoption.
This is a product leadership role. The leader must be able to move fluidly from customer problems and commercial opportunities to API behavior, data models, service workflows, and architecture tradeoffs. They will work directly with Technology and Product Delivery to shape solutions, challenge constraints, and ensure that new and existing APIs are coherent, scalable, secure, and practical for external partners.
The Director will set the target state and multi-year roadmap for the portfolio, modernize existing services, develop new API and data capabilities, and translate those capabilities into measurable customer, operational, and commercial outcomes.
ResponsibilitiesProduct Strategy & Portfolio Evolution
- Own the strategy and roadmap for acquiring APIs and services
- Define the target-state product. balancing new capabilities, modernization, partner migration, and retirement of legacy services.
- Translate customer needs, market trends, and technology developments into differentiated and commercially viable product opportunities.
Product Ownership, Technical Design & Delivery
- Own the full product lifecycle—from discovery and solution design through build, launch, adoption, and ongoing evolution.
- Translate complex needs into clear requirements, API behaviors, domain models, workflows, non-functional requirements, and acceptance criteria.
- Work hands-on with Technology and Architecture to review and challenge API specifications, schemas, integration flows, and solution tradeoffs.
- Drive prioritization and product KPIs across customer value, reliability, data quality, adoption, revenue, and cost-to-serve.
Customer Value, Commercialization & Adoption
- Engage directly with partners, merchants, developers, and internal users to validate product decisions and solve meaningful end-to-end problems.
- Partner with teams on value propositions, packaging, pricing, go-to-market, and adoption.
- Develop business cases and ensure roadmap priorities reflect customer outcomes, scalability, and commercial potential.
- Support strategic partner and sales discussions with strong product, technical, and commercial expertise.
Cross-Functional Leadership & Influence
- Lead across GMNS, Technology, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Pricing, Commercial, and Servicing to drive coordinated execution.
- Build trust, challenge assumptions constructively, surface risks early, and create clarity in a highly matrixed environment.
- Raise the product and technical bar through customer-centered design, reusable models, complete workflows, and strong lifecycle management.
- Distill complex product and architecture topics into clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions for senior leadership.
- Experience: Preferred 6+ years of product management or technical product leadership experience, including ownership of APIs, data products, platforms, or other complex B2B services used by external customers or partners.
- Technical fluency: Deep understanding of modern API and service architectures, including REST, event-driven models, webhooks, asynchronous processing, data contracts, security, performance, observability, versioning, and backward compatibility. Able to read and challenge detailed technical artifacts.
- Product judgment and solutioning: Demonstrated ability to move from an ambiguous customer or business problem to a coherent target-state product and technical solution, while making pragmatic delivery tradeoffs.
- Customer and commercial mindset: Proven ability to build technically complex products around real customer workflows and connect product decisions to adoption, revenue, operational efficiency, and measurable business value.
- Relationship leadership: Exceptional ability to earn trust, influence without authority, navigate a complex matrix, and create productive partnerships across Product, Technology, Architecture, Risk, Operations, and Commercial teams.
- High-bar execution: Track record of delivering durable products in demanding environments, with strong ownership, attention to detail, intellectual curiosity, and a bias toward action and measurable outcomes.
- Strategic thought leadership: Ability to connect market and technology shifts to a clear product strategy and translate that strategy into an executable roadmap.
- Transformational spirit: Proven ability to modernize legacy capabilities, lead complex cross-functional change, and improve how product and technology teams work together from strategy through execution.
- Executive communication: Outstanding communicator who can make complex product and technical topics clear, concise, and decision-oriented for audiences ranging from engineers to senior executives.
Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.
About the TeamWe back you with benefits that support your holistic well-being so you can be and deliver your best. This means caring for you and your loved ones' physical, financial, and mental health, as well as providing the flexibility you need to thrive personally and professionally:
- Competitive base salaries
- Bonus incentives
- 6% Company Match on retirement savings plan
- Free financial coaching and financial well-being support
- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits
- Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need
- 20+ weeks paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, offered for pregnancy, adoption or surrogacy
- Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location)
- Free and confidential counseling support through our Healthy Minds program
- Career development and training opportunities
For a full list of Team Amex benefits, visit our Colleague Benefits Site.
Skills Required
- 6+ years of product management or technical product leadership experience, preferably owning APIs, data products, platforms, or complex B2B services
- Deep understanding of modern API and service architectures, including REST, event-driven models, webhooks, asynchronous processing, data contracts, security, performance, observability, versioning, and backward compatibility
- Ability to translate ambiguous customer or business problems into target-state products and pragmatic technical solutions
- Proven ability to build technically complex products around customer workflows and connect decisions to adoption, revenue, efficiency, and business value
- Ability to earn trust, influence without authority, navigate complex matrixed organizations, and partner cross-functionally
- Track record of delivering durable products in demanding environments with strong ownership and measurable outcomes
- Ability to connect market and technology shifts to product strategy and executable roadmaps
- Experience modernizing legacy capabilities and leading complex cross-functional change
- Outstanding executive communication skills for explaining complex product and technical topics
- Employment eligibility to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
American Express Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about American Express and has not been reviewed or approved by American Express.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered generally solid for many, with frequent mentions of good compensation alongside strong benefits. Overall sentiment points to many employees feeling adequately paid even if it is not viewed as top-of-market.
American Express Insights
What We Do
At American Express, we know that with the right backing, people and businesses have the power to progress in incredible ways. Whether we’re supporting our customers’ financial confidence to move ahead, taking commerce to new heights, or encouraging people to explore the world, our colleagues are constantly striving to uphold our powerful backing promise to our customers and each other every day. These beliefs have been our North Star for 170 years as our business transformed – from helping evacuate travelers during World Wars, to ensuring the safety of our customers’ funds during the Great Depression in the U.S., to creating the Shop Small® movement to help small businesses recover from the Financial Crisis, to providing aid to communities impacted by many natural disasters and so much more. For generations, the key to our success has been the determination and resilience of our American Express colleagues. Now, as a globally integrated payments company, we work together to provide customers with access to products, insights and world-class experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Join us and let’s lead the way together.
