Job Title: Stripe Payment Operations Analyst - Principal Subject Matter Expert (SME).
Job Type: Freelance Contractual.
Geography: Remote / Flexible.
About the Leadership Role:
- In this leadership role, you will not be executing daily production tasks for a single software product or company, nor is this a direct course author role.
- Instead, you will be the visionary driving our curriculum.
- The Principal Subject Matter Expert (SME) acts as a technical/operational enabler, SME orchestrator, and program-level advisor.
- You will support Instructional Designers (IDs), junior SMEs, and delivery teams in translating complex industry architectures, tools, and best practices into effective, scalable, and practical learning experiences.
Course Focus:
- This course is designed to train entry-level professionals on the end-to-end financial stewardship of digital payments within the Stripe ecosystem, focusing heavily on reconciliation, dispute management, fraud prevention, and operational reporting.
Core Course Tracks (The Scope):
- Financial Control & Compliance (Audit, GAAP Accrual Accounting, Billing Configuration).
- Payment Processing & Dispute Handling (Stripe Payment Lifecycle, Chargebacks, Customer Issue Resolution).
- Fraud Prevention & Risk Management (Stripe Radar, Adaptive 3DS, AI Risk Scoring).
- Data Analysis & Operational Reporting (KPI Dashboards, Trend Identification, Stakeholder Reporting).
- Data Management & Advanced Tooling (Excel/Spreadsheet Modeling, Stripe Sigma/API Logs, Webhook Troubleshooting).
Domain-Specific Responsibilities & Quality Assurance:
- Technical/Operational Translation: Explain and translate complex concepts, tools, and workflows for the specific learning tracks, including:
- Navigating the Stripe Dashboard to trace complex payment objects (PaymentIntents, Charges, Customers, Balance Transactions) and explaining the differences between authorization, capture, and settlement.
- Setting up and validating Stripe Billing logic, including tax configurations, proration rules, trial handling, and automated dunning cycles for revenue recognition inputs.
- Developing hands-on spreadsheet models using advanced Excel functions (VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, Pivot Tables) to reconcile Stripe payout reports against bank deposits and adjust for FX or timing variances.
- Configuring Stripe fraud and compliance controls, including interpreting issuer decline codes, adjusting retry logic, and aligning workflows with PCI and AML/KYC obligations.
- Creating actionable operational dashboards (Tableau/Power BI) and standard operating procedures (SOPs) based on exported Stripe CSV data to report on authorization funnels and dispute drivers.
- Demonstrate and guide the use of Stripe sandbox and test environment tooling — including Test Clocks, CLI event triggering, and simulated billing cycles — to support instructional demonstrations and junior SME execution.
- Track payment processor and banking partner SLAs, document vendor incidents (decline rate spikes, settlement delays), and coordinate remediation discussions to validate curriculum accuracy and real-world relevance.
- Validate and guide curriculum content covering customer payment incident triage — including stuck refunds, dispute escalations, and cross-functional handoff SOPs across support, finance, and engineering.
- Portfolio & Artifact Review: Review and approve the core portfolio artifacts to ensure consistency, quality, and real-world accuracy. Artifacts include:
- Stripe Payment Flow/Architecture Case Study.
- Transaction/Payment Reconciliation Workbook.
- Dispute Management Playbook.
- Payment Operations Metrics Dashboard.
- Payment Operations Documentation / SOP.
- Stripe Radar Rule Set.
Experience Requirements:
- Stripe Depth: 3+ years of direct, hands-on Stripe ecosystem experience (Dashboard, Billing, Radar, Reports, and Sigma).
- Overall Experience: 5+ years overall in Payment Operations, Financial Operations, or FinTech.
Required Domain Skills (Hard Skills):
- Financial Reconciliation: Advanced ability to sync Stripe payouts with general ledgers and perform month-end close procedures.
- Accrual Accounting & Revenue Recognition: Working knowledge of GAAP/IFRS accrual accounting — specifically mapping Stripe invoice, proration, and subscription data to journal entries and revenue recognition schedules.
- Dispute & Fraud Management: Deep expertise in tracing failed transactions, managing the full chargeback lifecycle independently, configuring risk parameters (Radar rules, 3DS), and the ability to interpret and operationalize ML/AI risk model outputs (fraud scores, decline probability) into manual review queues and sampling strategies.
- Data Modeling & Operational Analytics: Advanced Excel proficiency including XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, dynamic Pivot Tables, and scenario-based financial modeling for Stripe payout reconciliation and FX variance analysis. Experience cleaning and standardizing Stripe CSV exports — including currency normalization, descriptor text cleanup, and spreadsheet-based row count and sum validation checks — and ability to build operational KPI dashboards in Tableau or Power BI using Stripe CSV exports or Sigma queries.
- Webhook & API Management: Hands-on experience with Stripe CLI, webhook endpoint configuration, event-driven debugging, and latency diagnostics (including JSON payload inspection and delivery time analysis).
Certifications:
- Mandatory / Strongly Preferred: Stripe Fundamentals, Stripe Professional Billing Architect, or Stripe Professional Payments Architect.
- Preferred / Bonus: Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Treasury Professional (CTP), or Accredited Payments Risk Professional (APRP).
Key Responsibilities: Core SME Orchestration & Enablement:
- Instructional Design Enablement: Advise Instructional Designers on critical curriculum decisions, including selecting the most effective industry tooling for practical demos and determining the appropriate depth vs. breadth of content to ensure alignment with the target learner's role-based outcomes.
- SME Coaching & Orchestration: Lead and mentor a team of junior SMEs who are developing individual course modules. Define the overarching demonstration strategy (hands-on execution vs. conceptual explanation), establish the baseline for all screencasts, and guide practitioners on how to physically execute deliverables.
- SME Sourcing & Hiring Support: Partner with the Hurix Digital talent acquisition team to source, evaluate, and place talent. Design evaluation rubrics that test hands-on Stripe dashboard navigation, Excel modeling depth, dispute evidence construction, and ability to explain GAAP-aligned reconciliation — not just conceptual familiarity. Differentiate hands-on practitioners from theoretical applicants during interviews.
- Program Problem Solving: Act as a senior escalation point to resolve delivery constraints, tooling limitations, or sandbox failures. Proactively recommend alternative demonstration approaches and monitor the industry ecosystem for software updates to adapt content without derailing production timelines.
General Qualifications & Competencies:
- Curriculum & Enablement Experience: Prior experience in corporate training, technical writing, developer advocacy, or serving as an SME for curriculum development/onboarding programs.
- Leadership & Mentorship: Demonstrated ability to lead, review, and orchestrate the work of junior developers/analysts in a remote or distributed team environment.
- Communication & Translation: Exceptional ability to translate complex architectures, workflows, or logic into clear, digestible frameworks for non-technical stakeholders (IDs, Project Managers).
- Curriculum Strategy: Strong grasp of adult learning principles and curriculum scoping for specific professional personas.
- Agile Problem Solving: Proactive in resolving ecosystem updates, software limitations, and production bottlenecks to keep delivery on track.
