Product Certification Manager

NMI is a leading provider of payment gateway solutions, specialising in card-present solutions and payment processing. We are seeking a Product Certification Manager to join our Payments Gateway group in the UK. This role sits alongside our Protocols team, which owns the services that manage connectivity between the NMI platform and external card acquirers and payment processors. Certifying those connections is what turns engineering work into live, revenue-generating processor integrations, and it is one of the most common places where delivery timelines slip.

As Product Certification Manager, you will own the gateway-to-processor certification pipeline end to end. You will track every open certification across our processor portfolio, maintain a clear and current view of where each one stands, and drive each to completion as quickly as the external party will allow. You will be the person who knows, at any moment, what is blocking go-live and who needs to move for it to clear.

• →Maintain a single source of truth for all in-flight and upcoming certifications across processors and acquirers, including status, owner, target dates, and outstanding test cases. You will keep this visible to engineering, product, and enterprise sales so certification timing feeds directly into deal and delivery planning.
• →Own the relationships with processor and acquirer certification teams. You will be the primary point of contact, manage the cadence of communication, and build the kind of working rapport that gets NMI prioritised when queues are long.
• →Negotiate test scope. Certification suites are often larger than a given integration warrants. You will work with processors to scope test cases down to what is genuinely required, challenge redundant or non-applicable cases, and reduce the certification burden without compromising correctness or compliance.
• →Escalate and clear third party blockers. When a certification stalls on the processor side, you will drive it forward: chasing responses, escalating through the right channels, and removing dependencies before they become schedule risk. You will treat external delay as something to be actively managed rather than passively absorbed.
• →Partner closely with the Protocols engineering team to sequence certification work against development, surface issues early, and make sure test failures get triaged and resolved quickly.

• →Own the gateway-to-processor certification pipeline end to end, maintaining a single, current source of truth for every open and upcoming certification across processors and acquirers, including status, owner, target dates, and outstanding test cases.
• →Take ownership of processor and acquirer certification relationships, acting as the primary point of contact and building the working rapport that gets NMI prioritised when certification queues are long.
• →Negotiate test scope with processors, scoping certification suites down to what is genuinely required, challenging redundant or non-applicable cases, and reducing certification burden without compromising correctness or compliance.
• →Proactively identify certification blockers and schedule risk, driving each open certification to completion as quickly as the external party will allow.
• →Escalate and clear third party blockers, chasing responses, escalating through the right channels, and removing dependencies before they become delivery risk.
• →Clearly articulate certification status, timelines, and trade-offs to engineering, Product, and enterprise sales stakeholders, so certification timing feeds directly into deal and delivery planning.
• →Partner closely with the Protocols engineering team to sequence certification against development, surface issues early, and ensure test failures are triaged and resolved quickly.
• →Drive improvements in how certification is tracked, forecast, and reported, raising the visibility and predictability of the pipeline over time.
• →Ensure certification work adheres to the relevant card network rules and compliance standards (e.g., PCI, card scheme mandates) throughout.
• →Contribute to preventative improvements, capturing lessons from stalled or delayed certifications and feeding them back into how the team plans future work.
  
  Skills and experience: 
  
  
• →Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.
• →Minimum of 5 years of experience managing technical projects or external partner relationships in a commercial environment, ideally in payments or a comparable regulated, integration-heavy domain.
• →Strong understanding of how payment gateways, acquirers, and processors fit together, and of the certification process that connects them.
• →Ability to read and reason about certification specifications and test cases well enough to negotiate scope credibly with processor teams.
• →Familiarity with major processors and acquirers (e.g., TSYS, Fiserv, Worldpay, Barclaycard, Elavon) strongly preferred.
• →Knowledge of card network rules and payment compliance standards (e.g., PCI, Visa, Mastercard, and Amex mandates) preferred.
• →Proven ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams and keep a complex pipeline organised, current, and visible to stakeholders.
• →Proven ability to manage external relationships and escalate effectively, pushing partners to move faster while preserving the relationship.
• →Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to anticipate blockers and proactively address them before they affect timelines.
• →Excellent communication skills, capable of explaining certification status and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• →Comfortable operating in high-stakes environments where reliability, security, and compliance are paramount.

NMI enables our partners with choice, and challenges the one-size-fits-all approach to payments. You've probably used NMI in the last 24 hours without even realising it. We’re the platform that powers success for innovative tech created by SMBs, entrepreneurs and fintech start-ups. We’re creative problem solvers who help visionaries smash through boundaries and think beyond what’s possible so they can think about what’s next. But we’re not just built for the tech savvy. We democratise the latest payments technology so that everyone can realise the benefits of easy payments across the full spectrum of commerce. We’re all about enabling more payments in more ways and more places.

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