Finance Manager, Payments

Lightspark is building the open payment protocol for the Internet making money move like data: instantly, globally, and without friction. With enterprise tools like Grid, Node, and Spark, businesses can send and receive money instantly, securely, and at a fraction of the cost, anytime, anywhere. Lightspark is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, but serves the world.

Lightspark is seeking a Finance Manager to spearhead the build out and operation of some of Lightspark’s key finance workstreams. The Finance Manager will. Your work will directly impact our operational resilience, customer trust, and ability to scale. You will also drive critical internal and external financial system integrations, including identifying the requirements and driving efficiencies for our bitcoin and fiat operations. Your ability to intricately connect finance requirements to our product solutions will be integral to our success.

This role is custom-made for someone with boundless optimism for the future and an insatiable appetite for learning. We value adaptability, and you will have a “can-do” attitude, and have a strong sense of ownership. You will need to be self-sufficient to deliver results.

What you'll be doing:

• Own a range of crypto-asset and fiat finance, treasury, and accounting priorities including calculating and tracking various revenue models, wallet structures, and liquidity management.

• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to align financial and treasury infrastructure with payments and settlement flows.

• Optimize financial systems and reporting. You will collaborate with various cross-functional teams to implement system enhancements that improve the tracking, allocation, and reporting of crypto and fiat funds flows as well as manage, monitor, and account for various cloud and hosted service expenses.

• Automating processes and integrating cost management tools to increase efficiency and accuracy.

• Implement and maintain systems to ensure complete, accurate and detailed reporting on various balance sheet metrics related to crypto and fiat holdings.

• Analyze large amounts of information, including conducting analysis of crypto transactions, quickly and effectively to reduce complexity and make actionable recommendations for management.

• Prepare regular reporting related to customer and company metrics, including reconciliations related to the company’s various income streams and associated holdings to ensure regulatory compliance and support strategic initiatives.

• Understand and audit the expected or existing financial processes: daily flow of funds, partner and customer relationships, verification processes and identify operational headaches and inefficiencies and execute on necessary changes.

• Be the subject matter expert and partner with finance leadership, cross-functional stakeholders and vendors for various system and partner integrations, with a focus on those with a financial and/or compliance impact (e.g. banking integrations, ERP implementation, regulatory reporting, etc.).

• Participate in the preparation of the annual budgeting and forecasting processes, offering insightful analysis and recommendations to senior management.

• Support management in completing special projects, ad-hoc questions and initiatives.

• Monitor and manage fiat, bitcoin, and other digital asset liquidity across global entities, banks, and custodians for all Lightspark entities.

• Execute timely internal transfers, fiat wires, bitcoin transactions, and exchange conversions to meet obligations.

• Develop frameworks for safeguarding funds, intercompany settlements, and liquidity stress testing.

• Support new product launches for both fiat and bitcoin flows.

• Leverage AI/ML and automation tools to streamline reconciliations, detect anomalies in cash/crypto flows, and enhance liquidity forecasting accuracy.

• Implement scalable processes and controls for reconciliations, settlements, and cash reporting.

• Partner with Compliance, Accounting, and Operations teams to support license renewals, and ongoing reporting obligations for financial KPIs (e.g. permissible investments reporting).

• Explore the use of AI-enabled reporting and monitoring tools to improve compliance efficiency and ensure timely, accurate filings across multiple jurisdictions.

• Build scalable playbooks and automation for settlements, reconciliations, and reporting, including evaluating how AI agents and data pipelines can evolve these processes over time.

What we are looking for:

• 7+ years of experience with broad experience in finance roles, including financial analysis, operations, treasury, systems and reporting in fintech, payments, or financial services.

• Experience in a regulated payments fintech or crypto company, work with international regulated payment entities is a plus.

• Experience with financial regulatory filings for licensed entities (e.g., state MTLs, FCA/EMI).

• Familiarity with banking systems and cloud based financial systems

• Experience with both traditional payment rails (SWIFT, ACH, SEPA, SPEI, etc) and digital asset flows (bitcoin on-chain transactions, Lightning Network, crypto custody solutions).

• Proficiency in BI tools such as Tableau, Power BI, BigQuery or Looker for financial data analysis and reporting with advanced financial modeling skills.

• Familiarity with GAAP principles, specifically revenue recognition and fair value measurements (CPA not required)

• Enthusiasm and energy to deeply understand our business model – pricing model, flow of funds, interactions across crypto + fiat rails, and implementing emerging technologies like AI to improve efficiency, scalability, and resilience

• Curiosity and comfort working with emerging AI/automation tools in finance. Experience applying AI/ML in financial forecasting, anomaly detection, or compliance reporting is also a nice to have.

• Experience in leading strategic and financial improvement initiatives

• Exposure to API-based banking and exchange integrations is nice to have.

• Ability, and enthusiasm, to see challenges as an opportunity to grow

• Experience communicating effectively across a broad range of communication mediums to a variety of different audiences, both internal and external

• Strong executive presence, including oral and written communication skills.

• Experience navigating a fast paced startup environment

• Ability to work onsite in our HQ in Los Angeles, California

Lightspark is on a mission to build an open payment protocol for the Internet at scale and therefore we’re committed to creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace to reflect the customers we serve. We welcome interest from individuals of all backgrounds and levels of experience who share our mission. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. 

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the State of California Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring.