Principal Product Manager, Core Network

As Principal Product Manager, Core Network at Circle, you own the product strategy and evolution of the CPN Payments Engine - the core infrastructure powering payment creation, routing, settlement, and lifecycle management across the network. You define the long-term vision and roadmap, identify opportunities to expand capabilities while improving reliability, performance, and scale, and work across Engineering, Compliance, Operations, and commercial teams to enable OFIs and BFIs to move money efficiently across expanding corridors and rails.

What you'll do

• Set the Payments Engine strategy by owning the long-term product vision and roadmap for payment creation, processing, routing, and settlement, aligning investments with CPN and Circle priorities.
• Advance payment performance at scale by establishing the product strategy for improving success rates, latency, resilience, and processing efficiency, using data to identify systemic opportunities and prioritize investments.
• Evolve API and protocol capabilities by defining the direction for OFI Payments APIs and BFI quoting and settlement protocols, balancing developer experience, interoperability, compliance, scalability, and network reliability.
• Expand network capabilities by identifying and leading investments that unlock new payment use cases, corridors, rails, and partner capabilities while building reusable infrastructure that scales across the network.
• Shape observability and operational control by defining product capabilities for monitoring, alerting, exception management, and operational tooling that improve visibility into payment health and enable faster issue resolution.
• Lead complex cross-functional decisions by partnering with Engineering, Compliance, Operations, Business Development, and other product leaders to navigate architectural and business trade-offs, resolve ambiguity, and drive alignment on high-impact investments.
• Establish product leadership for payment infrastructure by developing frameworks, metrics, and product practices that improve decision-making across CPN, mentoring other product managers, and serving as a subject matter expert on payment infrastructure across Circle.

What you bring

• 10+ years of relevant experience, including significant Product Management experience building payments, fintech, or financial infrastructure products.
• Deep experience owning platform or infrastructure products such as APIs, payment processing systems, settlement platforms, routing systems, or developer-facing capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to define product strategy and lead highly complex initiatives spanning multiple engineering and cross-functional teams.
• Strong analytical and technical fluency, with the ability to use payment performance, reliability, and operational data to identify systemic issues and guide product investment decisions.
• Track record of delivering measurable improvements to large-scale systems, including reliability, success rates, latency, scalability, operational efficiency, or customer outcomes.
• Ability to evaluate complex technical and business trade-offs and translate them into clear product decisions, priorities, and long-term platform investments.
• Strong cross-functional influence and communication skills, including the ability to build alignment with senior leaders and stakeholders across Engineering, Compliance, Operations, and commercial teams.

Nice to have

• Deep knowledge of payment networks, cross-border payments, settlement systems, correspondent banking, stablecoins, or blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
• Experience with enterprise API products, two-sided networks, and compliance-forward payment systems, including concepts such as SLAs, payment lifecycle events, exception handling, sanctions screening, RFIs, or the Travel Rule.

About Circle

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world's leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. The platform includes the world's largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet.