Manager, Embedded Finance Operations

Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses succeed in a digital world, helping business owners operate, increase sales, engage customers, and keep employees happy. Beyond point-of-sale and digital ordering, Toast offers financial solutions, including Toast Capital, that help restaurants access the funding they need to grow. We are building a new Embedded Finance Operations footprint in Bengaluru, and we're looking for the leader who will build it. This role is an extended arm of Toast's US Embedded Finance Operations team (40+ people) and is critical as we expand our footprint and international strategy. The role sits within the Embedded Finance Operations organization and partners closely with the US-based underwriting team and its leaders. As Manager of Embedded Finance, you will set up and lead a high-performing underwriting function from the ground up, working closely with Product, Engineering, and Risk partners in Bengaluru and with your leadership in the US. This is a player-coach role. You'll understand the lending business deeply enough to make and review credit decisions yourself, while building the team, processes, and tooling that let the function scale. The scope is big. This team sits at the center of how Toast uses automation, data, and AI to change how lending operations work. If you're a lending operations leader who loves building something new, brings an automation and analytics mindset, and can lead people through change, read on! A day in the life (Responsibilities) • Build the underwriting function from the ground up. Stand up Toast's Embedded Finance Operations presence in Bengaluru: define the operating model, workflows, quality standards, SLAs, and controls for a high-performing underwriting team. • Lead as a player-coach. Manage a team of underwriters directly and few team members on a dotted line. Stay hands-on with underwriting decisions, case reviews, and escalations while coaching the team to consistent, high-quality outcomes. • Hire and grow the team. Partner on annual planning to shape headcount and capacity needs, then recruit, onboard, and develop talent as the team expands. • Drive automation and AI transformation. Find opportunities to automate manual underwriting and operations work, and partner with Product and Engineering to build and roll out AI-enabled tools, decisioning workflows, and self-serve processes. • Make operations data-driven. Define the metrics that matter (throughput, turnaround time, decision quality, accuracy) and build the BI dashboards and analytics that track performance, surface risk, and guide decisions. • Build strong cross-functional partnerships. Act as the operations voice to Product, Engineering, and Risk stakeholders in Bengaluru. Translate operational insight into product requirements and policy feedback. • Work as part of a global team. Partner closely with the US-based underwriting team and leaders, and with global Embedded Finance counterparts, to align on priorities, policies, and standards across time zones. • Lead through change. Guide the team through new processes, tools, and ways of working with clear communication, empathy, and a steady focus on outcomes. • Maintain strong risk and compliance discipline. Make sure underwriting practices follow credit policy, regulatory expectations, and internal controls, and support audits and reviews as needed. • Use AI tools in your own workflow and help set how the team uses them well, including how to critically evaluate what they produce. What you'll need to thrive (Requirements) • 10+ years of experience in lending, credit, or financial services operations, with a strong understanding of the lending business and the underwriting lifecycle. • Hands-on underwriting or credit decisioning experience (small business, merchant, or commercial lending preferred), with the judgment to make and review complex credit calls. • Proven people leadership experience: you have managed and grown teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and building team culture. • Experience building or scaling an operations function, ideally in a new market or a new team. • A strong background in process automation, BI, and data analytics. You can work with data directly (e.g., SQL, Excel, Looker, Tableau or similar) and use it to drive decisions. • A track record of leading teams through change, including adopting new tools, processes, or operating models. • Excellent relationship-building and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence Product, Engineering, and Risk partners without direct authority. • Experience working in global teams and collaborating across time zones, including regular overlap with US-based leadership. • Strategic thinking combined with an execution-focused, roll-up-your-sleeves approach. • Clear written and verbal communication. You can explain complex operational and credit topics simply to a range of audiences. • Comfortable using AI-powered tools to improve productivity and decision-making, with the judgment to validate what they produce. What will help you stand out (Nonessential Skills/Nice to Haves) • Experience in fintech, embedded finance, or merchant cash advance / small business lending. • Experience implementing AI or machine-learning-assisted decisioning or workflow automation in an operations setting. • Experience setting up a new center of excellence or global capability center in India. • Familiarity with credit risk frameworks, fraud prevention, or KYC/KYB processes. • Lean, Six Sigma, or other process-improvement experience. • Experience in restaurant, hospitality, or SMB-focused businesses. AI at Toast At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Prod