Website:
npci.org.in
Job details:
Role Overview
NPCI is looking for a senior product leader to drive innovation, platform evolution, and next-generation capability development across the UPI ecosystem.
This role will be responsible for defining and executing the innovation roadmap for UPI, enabling continuous platform evolution to meet emerging ecosystem needs, scale requirements, and future payment use cases. The incumbent will lead product discovery, ecosystem experimentation, platform architecture direction, and AI-enabled product acceleration to ensure UPI remains at the forefront of digital payment innovation.
The role requires strong product leadership, platform thinking, technology depth, ecosystem understanding, and execution excellence. The candidate will work closely with engineering, ecosystem participants, business stakeholders, and industry leadership to drive scalable product innovation and operational readiness.
This position also demands strong adoption thinking, platform governance, AI-enabled product development capabilities, and executive stakeholder management.
Job Details
Designation: Head – UPI Product Innovation & Platform Evolution
Function: UPI Product
Location: Mumbai
Experience: 12+ Years
Key Responsibilities
Product Innovation Strategy & Roadmap Leadership
- Own and drive the innovation roadmap for new UPI capabilities, platform enhancements, and ecosystem evolution initiatives.
- Define strategic product outcomes, roadmap milestones, ecosystem adoption targets, and innovation success metrics.
- Identify emerging opportunities across payments, digital commerce, platform scalability, and ecosystem enablement to shape future UPI capabilities.
- Ensure alignment between innovation priorities, ecosystem needs, and organizational strategic objectives.
Product Discovery & Ecosystem Experimentation
- Drive structured product discovery initiatives with banks, PSPs, TPAPs, merchants, fintechs, and ecosystem participants.
- Lead rapid experimentation programs to validate product concepts, use cases, ecosystem readiness, and adoption potential.
- Translate ecosystem insights, discovery outcomes, and experimentation learnings into build-ready product specifications and implementation plans.
- Establish repeatable discovery-to-execution frameworks for accelerated product innovation.
Platform Architecture & API Product Strategy
- Define and drive an API-first platform product strategy focused on scalability, integration simplicity, interoperability, and ecosystem adoption.
- Ensure platform evolution principles around backward compatibility, extensibility, modularity, and scale-by-design architecture.
- Work closely with engineering and architecture teams to align product strategy with technology platform capabilities.
- Drive ecosystem-friendly integration models that reduce implementation friction and improve partner onboarding velocity.
Engineering Partnership & Performance Excellence
- Partner closely with engineering teams to ensure platform readiness for scale, reliability, and performance demands.
- Drive product decisions that improve transaction performance metrics including authorization success rates (ASR), latency, throughput, and ecosystem resilience.
- Support surge readiness planning, performance engineering, and platform optimization initiatives tied to product evolution.
- Ensure product innovation balances customer experience, technical feasibility, ecosystem scalability, and operational reliability.
Product Development Lifecycle Governance
- Institutionalize strong Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) governance across innovation initiatives.
- Define documentation standards, launch governance mechanisms, review frameworks, telemetry expectations, and release readiness processes.
- Establish structured post-launch learning loops, feedback capture mechanisms, and continuous improvement practices.
- Drive execution discipline across the product lifecycle from concept to launch and optimization.
Leadership & Ecosystem Representation
- Represent the UPI innovation roadmap in executive leadership discussions, industry forums, ecosystem engagements, and strategic governance platforms.
- Influence ecosystem stakeholders and internal leadership on future product direction and innovation priorities.
- Mentor Product Leads and strengthen second-line product leadership capability within the organization.
- Build a culture of innovation, experimentation, product excellence, and technology-led problem solving.
Required Technical Skills
- Strong expertise in digital payments platforms, UPI ecosystem architecture, and API-driven platform models
- Deep understanding of product management frameworks, platform product strategy, and innovation lifecycle execution
- Strong familiarity with scalable distributed systems, performance engineering considerations, and platform reliability concepts
- Knowledge of transaction processing systems, payment workflows, integration ecosystems, and interoperability frameworks
- Understanding of telemetry, observability, product analytics, experimentation frameworks, and release governance mechanisms
AI & Data Capabilities
AI-Enabled Product Acceleration
- Leverage Generative AI for discovery synthesis, requirements drafting, specification refinement, risk analysis, and edge-case enumeration with appropriate governance controls.
- Accelerate product review cycles using AI-assisted documentation and specification workflows.
- Use AI-enabled tooling to improve product decision-making speed and execution efficiency.
Machine Learning-Driven Product Prioritization
- Apply data-driven and ML-assisted prioritization approaches using adoption trends, platform reliability indicators, ecosystem integration complexity, and implementation cost signals.
- Drive intelligent roadmap prioritization using measurable ecosystem and platform performance insights.
AI-Assisted Observability & Reliability Intelligence
- Enable AI-assisted observability frameworks for automated log summarization, issue clustering, regression detection, and incident intelligence.
- Collaborate with engineering and reliability teams to improve operational visibility through intelligent monitoring capabilities.
AI-Driven Experimentation & Product Validation
- Prototype faster using AI-enabled product design workflows, experimentation analysis, and user journey simulations.
- Reduce time-to-validation for new product ideas through AI-assisted experimentation and rapid iteration approaches.
Key Skills & Experience Required
- 12+ years of relevant experience in product management, platform leadership, payments innovation, fintech, or digital ecosystem product strategy
- Proven experience in leading large-scale platform product initiatives and ecosystem-facing product innovation programs
- Strong product discovery, roadmap strategy, experimentation, and execution leadership capabilities
- Deep understanding of API product management, platform scalability, and ecosystem integration design
- Strong collaboration skills across product, engineering, architecture, operations, and leadership teams
- Experience operating in high-scale, high-velocity, mission-critical digital platform environments
- Excellent stakeholder management, executive communication, and strategic influencing capabilities
- Demonstrated ability to mentor product teams and build organizational product leadership capability
Good to Have Skills & Experience Required
- Experience in real-time payments, banking platforms, fintech ecosystems, or national-scale digital infrastructure
- Exposure to AI-enabled product management workflows and intelligent product operations
- Familiarity with observability tooling, experimentation platforms, and performance analytics frameworks
- Experience in ecosystem-driven product innovation and industry-scale platform evolution programs
- Strong analytical mindset with data-driven product decision-making capabilities
- Exposure to reliability engineering concepts, performance optimization, and platform governance models
Please share your updated resume on Trupti.Mithun_nit@npci.org.in with your below asked details
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