Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Team Summary

Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) drives tangible, impactful and financial results for Visa's clients, including card issuers, acquirers, and merchants.  Drawing on our expertise in strategy consulting, data analytics, brand management, marketing, operations and macroeconomics, VCA solves the most strategic problems for our clients.

The VCA team within Japan provides a comprehensive range of consulting services and solutions to our clients in Japan, that address unique challenges in areas such as strategic growth, profitability, risk management and digital strategy.

What a Senior Director, Visa Consulting and Analytics Expert Team Lead does at Visa:

As a Senior Director, you will be responsible for designing and building the VCA Japan Expert Team of payments specialists in order to deliver high-quality consulting engagements to Visa’s clients in Japan. The team that you build will work alongside generalist payment consultants and data scientists to provide deep industry expertise and in turn drive measurable impact to clients’ and Visa’s business performance.

Key responsibilities include:

• Build and manage a large team comprised of consultants and industry experts specialized in six different payment practices – digital, risk, portfolio optimization, strategy, commercial payments, and acquiring
• Lead each team to develop practice-specific set-plays (packaged consulting offerings) and to customize existing set-plays to the Japan market needs
• Establish an intellectual property (IP) repository on topics by capitalizing on learnings from consulting engagements and by closely liaising with other regions’ expert teams
• Continuously build knowledge, surfacing new insights and producing thought-leadership pieces that contribute to each practice’s development
• Proactively engage in client discussions to establish VCA as a trusted advisor and thought leader and to generate incremental demand for services in each practice
• Manage team performance, taking joint responsibility along with client-aligned teams for meeting key metrics such as project revenues, client satisfaction, and project impact
• Collaborate with the data science team to leverage advanced data analytics capabilities

Why this is important to Visa

VCA’s services allow our clients to boost their business performance by leveraging Visa’s expansive market insights and data. This in turn drives Visa’s business, creating a win-win relationship where both client and Visa’s incentives are aligned to grow the business. This dynamic combined with the long-term relationship we have with clients enables a deeper level of engagement and impact compared to traditional consulting firms. VCA projects also help drive Visa Japan’s strategic initiatives and accelerate Japan’s transformation to a cashless society.

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Qualifications

What you will need:
Having already accumulated a variety of experience in consulting and financial services, you will be curious about the payments industry and keen to work alongside an experienced team to quickly gain a deeper understanding. You will be client driven, comfortable managing a project end to end and relishing the opportunity to work closely with clients to influence their future performance.

Specific skills and experience you will bring are:

• Fluent Japanese and at least business level English proficiency
• 15 or more years’ experience in strategy consulting or corporate strategy with a track record of high performance, ideally in payments or financial services
• Experience managing a large team with multiple reporting layers
• Superior business development skills in consulting or other professional services.
• Excellent communication skills, strong executive presence, and the demonstrated ability to develop relationships as trusted advisor with senior client stakeholders
• Superior analytical and problem-solving skills, with demonstrated intellectual and analytical rigor
• Strong team orientation with a collaborative, diplomatic, and flexible style. Able to work effectively in a matrixed organization
• Excellent detail orientation, ensuring the highest level of quality/rigor in reports and data analysis
• Excellent presentation skills, including strong oral and written capabilities
• Self-motivated, results-oriented individual with the ability to progress multiple priorities concurrently
• Experience in and passion for the power of analytics to inform and drive strategy and tactics, and proven ability to generate insights from data

What will also help:

• Experience in portfolio optimization or cardholder lifecycle management
• PMP certification or experience in technical project management
• Experience in customer experience design (using human-centered design / design thinking)
• An understanding of statistical analysis, modelling, scoring schemes, etc.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.