Senior Director, Disputes & Payments

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.
Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.
The Upwork Disputes & Payment teams are a part of Upwork’s Customer Support organization. These teams, alongside an Executive Escalations team you will oversee, ensure that when there are interruptions to the customer experience they are addressed with urgency, empathy, and full compliance with internal controls.
As the Senior Director of Disputes & Payments, you will be at the center of defining Upwork’s strategic approach to handling contract disputes and mediations between Upwork clients and freelancers, payment processing concerns, and escalations management. At the end of the day, you will enable your team to shift challenges on the platform from customer churn mitigation actions to opportunities to increase customer commitment and loyalty and implement internal improvements.
This is an exciting opportunity to build an essential function within Upwork. Come help us change how the world works. You will report to the VP of Customer Support.
Your Responsibilities:

• Design, measure, and communicate the strategic direction and operational oversight for our Disputes & Mediation, Executive Escalations, and Payment Operations teams and related processes. Partner with cross-functional teams to develop new strategies to solve the up-funnel origination of issues to reduce contacts.
• Develop necessary operational and business metrics to measure your teams’ success and impact. You will partner with teams in Business Analytics to ensure the reliability and availability of data from numerous sources.
• You will assess technologies - both current and potential - to find innovative solutions.
• Hire, and develop a varied, globally-based team, including managers and ICs and communicate mission and goals with transparency
• You will own operational relationships with external payment partners; ensure accountability for any contractual clauses about support procedures and expectations.
• Define roadmap strategies and plans including measurable outcomes that may be incorporated into annual Operating Plans.

What it Takes to Catch our Eye:

• You are well versed in collaborating with peers, customers, and executives, and tailoring your message accordingly. You can take multiple inputs and ideas and distill them into a cohesive and measurable strategic and data-influenced message.
• Experience building and following new and often innovative strategies that directly connect important initiatives to measurable results.
• Progressive people management, with experience building and developing high-performing teams.
• Experience leading dispute mediation and escalation support teams, preferably in the two-sided marketplace/payments/FinTech space.

The annual base salary for this position in California and Washington ranges from $152,000 - $262,000. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salary for this position in California and Washington, and individual base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Additionally, this position is eligible for the annual bonus plan or sales incentive plan and eligibility to participate in our long term equity incentive program.
Come change how the world works.
Change the world around you.
At Upwork, you'll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals. While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, we also hire full-time employees in 19 states in the United States.
Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. And oh yeah, we've also got amazing benefits - including medical insurance for you and your family, unlimited PTO, 401(k) with matching, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about our benefits and the employee experience.
Check out our Careers page to learn more about the employee experience.
Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
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