Lead platform architecture and modernization for VGS's payment tokenization platform. Define API and tooling standards, drive migrations, own technical debt, collaborate cross-functionally, deliver observability, networking, CLI and enterprise authentication capabilities, and ensure high-quality developer experiences and customer onboarding.
VGS is the world's leader in payment tokenization. Large banks, aspiring fintechs, and growing merchants embed our universal token vault into their technology stack to manage the complexities of payment data tokenization across processors and networks, open banking, card issuance, omnichannel loyalty, PCI compliance, payment orchestration, and more. We empower our clients and partners by tokenizing sensitive payment data, limiting compliance scope, and consolidating payments to unlock revenue and business opportunities.
VGS provides processor-agnostic tokenization solutions via secure universal token vaults, iframes, mobile SDKs, tokenization proxies, APIs, and data orchestration tooling to support payment acceptance, card issuance, PII and bank account tokenization, and other payments value-added services. Some of the use cases we enable include multi-processor Network Tokenization, Account Updater, payment orchestration, secure settlement file processing, 3DS, and Risk provider connectivity.
We are seeking a Principal Product Manager to serve as the architect of our platform's evolution. This is a role for a high-agency leader who thrives on complexity and demands technical perfection. You won't just build features; you will define the rigorous standards, migration strategies, and primitive structures that power the world's leading payment credential platform.
In this role, you will work across our company and customer base to deliver products in the service of security, compliance, SRE teams, as well as back-end engineers. You will need to understand users, products, and business needs to refine existing—and define new—capabilities in our proxy services, CLI, observability tooling, private networking, batch file processing, and enterprise authentication systems.We seek a curious, tech-minded, and highly resourceful PM who can rapidly build and iterate solutions. You must be willing to drive technical rigor at the lowest level. This means doing the hard, foundational work required to maintain a high-quality experience for all VGS developer products.
What you will be doing at VGS…
- Drive Platform Convergence: Audit, consolidate, and elevate our API and tooling surfaces into a unified, best-in-class developer experience. You will be responsible for the 'integrity' of the platform.
- Architect an Agent-Ready Platform: Drive the convergence of disparate tools into a single, high-fidelity surface. You will impose strict semantic standards to ensure our APIs, connectivity options, external O11y offering, CLI, and IAC tooling are well-documented, self-describing and machine-parsable, reducing friction for human developers while enabling reliable interaction for the next generation of AI coding agents.
- Own Technical Debt & Modernization Strategy: Lead the high-stakes navigation of deprecating legacy systems and migrating enterprise customers to modern architecture with zero downtime.
- Product Strategy & Discovery: Meet with business, product, and engineering leaders to map complex problems to business needs. Define technical requirements, prioritize features, and create roadmaps that align with business objectives.
- Product Design: Conceptualize easy-to-use technical interfaces and partner with UX Designers and Engineers from various disciplines to develop high-fidelity experiences. Continuously engage with clients to identify key challenges, prioritize, and build engaging solutions through the UI.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Lead cross-functional teams (Engineering, UX, Testing, Sales, Project Management, Legal, Security, etc.) to deliver against the product roadmap.
- Launch and Support: Own launch-related activities, including customer onboarding, integration support, creating implementation guides, and training.
- Performance Analysis: Define and track KPIs and analytics to report product performance, inform decision-making, and guide future roadmap.
- Stakeholder Communication: Communicate new features and roadmaps to various stakeholders and provide updates to management.
What we are looking for from you (Requirements)...
- Experience: 10+ years of experience in software engineer tooling development, product management, or related functions. Must have experience launching new initiatives that involve designing and building APIs, O11y, private networking, enterprise authentication systems, and other software developer-related technologies.
- T-Shaped Technical Mastery: This position requires a broad proficiency across networking, observability, technical protocols, enterprise architecture, and software development. However, you must possess deep, expert-level depth in at least one of these areas.
- Technical Conviction: You have strong, well-founded opinions on software architecture. You are willing to advocate for the right technical decision, even when it is difficult or contrarian, rather than just the easy one.
- Communication Skills: This position involves communicating new ideas to customers, executives, GTM leaders, and implementation teams. Therefore, strong written, verbal, and visual communication skills are required to be successful in this role. This includes writing technical documentation that is ready to be published online and that can be included in technical RFP presentations.
- Experience working on B2B or B2B2C products and directly engaging with customers.
- Mindset: Relentlessly Organized: You bring order to chaos. You treat a product launch with the same meticulous planning as a complex logistical operation.
- Pragmatic Optimism: You view legacy code and technical debt not as a burden, but as a puzzle to be solved. You bring energy and a "can-do" spirit to the most difficult modernization challenges.
- Nice to Have: Domain knowledge in financial products, particularly payment acceptance, financial systems, digital wallets, and money movement rails.
- Experience working with GTM teams to bring new products to market
By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to...
- Define the Industry Standard: You won’t just be shipping features. You will be defining the primitives and architectural standards for how the world's largest organizations move, secure, and understand their sensitive data.
- Operate with Radical Autonomy: This is a high-trust role. You will have the mandate to make difficult technical trade-offs ("The Right Way" vs. "The Easy Way") and the authority to drive them to completion.
- Build for the AI Era: You will pioneer the transition from human-centric APIs and interfaces to deterministic, agent-ready interfaces, solving a massive industry challenge before anyone else.
- Solve the "Hard" Problems: You will tackle the complex, high-leverage challenges (migrations, convergence, and technical debt) that actually determine long-term success.
What you get from us...
• Flexible work hours and flexible PTO
• Competitive health benefits
• VGS stock options
• 401k plan, with employer matching 4% and immediate vesting (available only for US employees)
• Life & disability insurance
• Pre-tax flexible spending accounts, dependent and healthcare FSA (available only for US employees)
• Global parental leave program
• Employee Assistance Program
• Home Internet reimbursement
• New hire home office set-up allowance
• Professional learning reimbursement
At VGS, we have a remote-first philosophy because we believe flexibility leads to great work and a healthy work-life balance. That said, if you live within 30 miles of one of our office locations, you’ll be on a hybrid schedule with some in-person time—because we know there’s real value in coming together.
We’re not about being in the office every day—but we are about connection, collaboration, and the energy that comes from a great brainstorm, a team lunch, or celebrating a big win in person.
We consider applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, physical or mental disability, or other protected classes under all local, state, and federal laws and ordinances (AA/EOE/W/M/Vet/Disabled).
Qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Visa Sponsorship. The Company does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire and throughout their employment. Individuals with temporary visas such as E, F-1 (including those with OPT or CPT), H-1, H-2, L-1, B, J, or TN, or who need sponsorship for work authorization now or in the future, are not eligible.
Please note we are currently only hiring in the following states...
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Washington
Top Skills
Apis,Observability (O11Y),Cli,Infrastructure As Code (Iac) Tooling,Private Networking,Mobile Sdks,Iframes,Tokenization,Universal Token Vaults,Payment Orchestration,Network Tokenization,Account Updater,3Ds,Pci Compliance,Enterprise Authentication Systems,Sre Tooling
Very Good Security San Francisco, California, USA Office
207 Powell St, Suite 200, , San Francisco, CA, United States, 94102
Similar Jobs
.png)
Cloud • Insurance • Payments • Software • Business Intelligence • App development • Big Data Analytics
The Sr. UX Designer will lead user experience projects, collaborating with Product Management to enhance product usability through user research, design, and prototyping.
Top Skills:
BalsamiqFigmaMiro
Cloud • Fintech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software
Manage the complete hiring lifecycle for tech and engineering talent, collaborating with leaders to ensure efficient recruitment practices and a strong candidate experience.
Top Skills:
Candidate JourneyHiring LifecycleRecruitment Data
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
Design and build the orchestration, planning, and evaluation systems for Dropbox Dash's AI platform while collaborating with multiple teams to ensure reliable performance at scale.
Top Skills:
APIsData ModelsFault ToleranceOrchestrationScheduling SystemsService ReliabilityWorkflow
What you need to know about the San Francisco Tech Scene
San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area attracts more startup funding than any other region in the world. Home to Stanford University and UC Berkeley, leading VC firms and several of the world’s most valuable companies, the Bay Area is the place to go for anyone looking to make it big in the tech industry. That said, San Francisco has a lot to offer beyond technology thanks to a thriving art and music scene, excellent food and a short drive to several of the country’s most beautiful recreational areas.
Key Facts About San Francisco Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 365,500; 13.9% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Google, Apple, Salesforce, Meta
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, fintech, consumer technology, software
- Funding Landscape: $50.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins
- Research Centers and Universities: Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; University of San Francisco; Santa Clara University; Ames Research Center; Center for AI Safety; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
