Program Manager, Bank Partnerships
Cardless · San Francisco · $150,000–$200,000 (stated in the posting)
About Cardless
Cardless is building the infrastructure for the world's best companies to design, build, and launch financial products. Companies like Coinbase and Bilt use Cardless to create credit cards that feel entirely their own. In an industry where branded financial products usually mean shared logos and shared control, Cardless is built to disappear. Our APIs and components shape the journey from the first application to every purchase, reward, and moment of support that follows, while we handle lending, compliance, and operations behind the scenes.
In September 2025, we raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital, bringing our total funding to $170 million. The team is over 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026.
We're looking for kind, humble people with high standards and low egos. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We see what could be improved, make it so, and leave every product, system, and team better than we found it.
About the role
We're looking for a program manager to own the day-to-day working relationship between Cardless and the banks that issue our cards, and to run new card programs from signed deal to live launch. You will be our bank partners' primary point of contact, the person who knows where every open item stands and keeps each partner informed early. Cardless is a program manager that partners with FDIC- and OCC-regulated issuing banks to design and deliver co-branded credit cards, so the work has to account for obligations across multiple bank partners with different regulators, expectations, and reporting cadences. Understanding that structure, where the bank holds the regulatory obligation and we perform the work, is key to succeeding here.
This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role with no direct reports. You sit on the Compliance team and report to our Chief Compliance Officer. As our portfolio grows, this role brings bank partner management into one seat: you will build the trackers, the reporting rhythm, and the governance cadence for it, and your first assignment is a live program launch.
What you'll do
Own the day-to-day relationship with our issuing bank partners as their primary point of contact for program status, open items, approvals, and escalations.
Personally write the documents our partners read: status packages, launch trackers with real dates behind them, diligence responses, and partner correspondence. You author the judgment in them, not just the formatting.
Communicate risks and timeline changes to bank partners accurately and early, and commit only to dates the delivery team has agreed to.
Run new program launches end to end: kickoff, the requirements and approvals checklist, partner-facing materials, legal and compliance milestones, and the launch timeline, coordinating Compliance, Legal, Product, Engineering, and Operations so each item arrives at the bank complete.
Build and run the governance cadence with each partner (recurring check-ins, steering committees, quarterly reviews) and maintain the obligations tracker for each bank agreement, keeping internal owners to their dates.
Translate internal workstreams into clear, partner-ready updates, prepare our team for partner meetings, and identify friction on rewards, payments, disputes, and other program mechanics early, routing it to the right owner with a proposed answer.
Support due diligence and onboarding for new bank and brand partners, and examination and audit requests that come through our bank partners, and use AI and automation tooling to keep trackers, status packages, and checklists current.
What we're looking for
10+ years in program management, partnerships, or account management at a bank, fintech, payments company, or other regulated financial services company. This is a requirement, not a preference: experience outside financial services does not qualify on its own.
You have personally sat across from a bank or a regulator as the person responsible for a program, a deliverable, or a response.
Demonstrated ability to manage complex, multi-stakeholder relationships where technical, legal, and business considerations all have to be balanced, working cross-functionally with compliance, legal, product, and engineering.
Strong writing. You can take a messy cross-functional situation and produce a clear, accurate, partner-ready document from a blank page.
A bias toward early communication. You would rather raise a risk now than have a partner learn of it late, and you can describe a time you did.
Comfort operating in ambiguity, building process where none exists yet, and using data and AI tools to work more efficiently.
Bonus Points
Experience with card issuing, co-branded credit card programs, or working directly with issuing or sponsor banks, from either side of the relationship.
Familiarity with the regulatory considerations that shape bank and fintech partnerships: third-party risk management, program governance, and what an examination asks of a service provider.
Experience launching a new financial product from contract signing through go-live, or a technical program management background.
This role isn't a fit if
You need a fully remote schedule. We're in our San Francisco office at least three days a week. If you're based in the Salt Lake City area and can meet with partners there in person, we'll also consider you working from home.
There is no playbook for this role and no daily check-in. If you do your best work with structure handed to you, this is not the seat.
This is a hands-on build, not a maintenance job. If you are looking for a quiet role with settled processes, this is not the seat.
This seat writes the document, not the meeting invite about it. If you would rather coordinate the author than be the author, this is not the seat.
Why this role
You are the person who writes the document, not the person who schedules the meeting about it. You have delivered difficult news to a counterparty early because you understood that late news costs more than early news. You know that a bank partner is a supervised institution with obligations of its own, and you can reason from that to what needs to be escalated and how fast. You are comfortable with a blank page, and you build a mechanism rather than absorbing the work by hand.
Own the relationship with the banks that issue our cards, as the single voice they hear from first, reporting to our Chief Compliance Officer.
Run a live program launch as your first assignment, from signed deal to go-live, and build the trackers, reporting rhythm, and governance cadence that the next programs run on.
Sit at the intersection of Compliance, Legal, Product, Engineering, and Operations, with the bank partners on the other side of the table.
What success looks like at six months. Our bank partners hear about every material development from us first, the launch you inherited has gone live on the timeline you held, the governance cadence runs without our CCO needing to be in every meeting, and the reporting rhythm you built is the one a second and third program run on.
Compensation
This role has an annual starting salary range of $150,000 to $200,000 plus equity and benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.
Benefits
We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits:
💸 Meaningful Start-up equity
🏥 100% health, vision & dental primary coverage
➕ 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage
🍱 Catered lunches
🚎 $250/month Commuter benefit
👶 Parental leave
✈️ Team building events & happy hours
🌴 Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year
🖥️ Apple equipment
💸 401k plan
Location
We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. We’re in the office at least three days a week, and most of us are there more than that, because we do our best thinking and building together in person. We’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited to be there alongside the team.