Payment Operations Analyst

Join Astra as a Payments Operations Analyst, where you'll be the operational glue between Astra, our sponsor banks, and our clients. You'll monitor transaction flows, resolve exceptions, and help scale our sponsor bank relationship as volume grows. This role is critical to keeping operations reliable, maintaining healthy banking relationships, and ensuring client confidence in the platform.

• Monitor daily transaction activity across ACH, RTP/FedNow, and card rails for anomalies, failures, and settlement issues.
• Triage and resolve payment exceptions, including ACH returns, AFT/OCT decline codes, and failed settlements.
• Draft and send day-to-day operational emails to sponsor banks, following up on open items, flagging discrepancies, and pushing issues to resolution.
• 0–2 years of experience in payments operations, banking operations, or a related fintech/financial services role
• Ability and willingness to travel up to ~15% annually
• Willingness to write and own external-facing communication with banking partners — this role involves regular, direct written correspondence with bank contacts
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent open items/threads without letting things fall through the cracks
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup environment with evolving processes
• Comfortable writing basic SQL queries, or eager to learn quickly (this role runs recurring data pulls against production data)
• Strong attention to detail — this role involves reconciling financial data across systems where small discrepancies matter
• Comfortable learning payment rails (ACH, RTP/FedNow, card networks) quickly on the job; no prior deep expertise required
• No specific certifications required, though familiarity with NACHA rules or card network operating regulations is a plus
• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business, Economics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Exposure to payment processing systems, core banking platforms, or similar operational tooling
• Comfortable with SQL for querying transaction data (BigQuery experience a plus)
• Proficiency with spreadsheets for reconciliation and reporting
• Experience working with a bank partner on limit increases, network onboarding, or reconciliation projects
• Direct experience with sponsor bank or BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) relationships
• Familiarity with ISO 8583 messaging, NACHA ACH rules, or card network chargeback/dispute processes
• Exposure to fraud or dispute management (e.g., Reg E, chargeback reason codes)