Finance Product Lead

If you want to build the infrastructure that will grow into the world's largest SMB-to-SMB payment network, you should come work at Tern.

ABOUT TERN

Tern is a venture-backed software company on a mission to reshape the $127B travel agency industry by giving power back to the entrepreneurs who built it.

Nearly 98% of travel agencies are small businesses. These businesses have been chronically underserved by technology. We're here to change that. Our platform helps travel advisors run more efficient, professional, and profitable operations, giving them the modern infrastructure they need to lead the next chapter of travel.

But the impact goes beyond business. Travel advisors help clients move more intentionally through the world. When a traveler works with an advisor, they're more likely to avoid overtouristed hotspots and more likely to spend their dollars in places where they can do real good. That's the kind of travel we want more of.

At Tern, we believe in small business. We believe in the power of travel. And we're building the future of both.

FINANCE PRODUCT LEAD

Travel advisors run small businesses that move real money. Clients pay deposits, agencies pay agents, suppliers pay commissions, and most of the accounting under all of it still runs through tools built decades ago. Tern has spent the last two years building the workflow layer advisors and agency owners actually want to use. Now we're building the financial system of record that sits underneath it.

This role owns that build. You won't be starting from zero. We already have credit card authorization, a real commission reconciliation suite, and agent payment tracking in production. What's missing is the layer that lets agency owners actually run their business on Tern: service fee collection, membership fee billing, invoicing, month-end close, exports, and the GL flows that connect all of it.

For the first six months, you'll partner closely with the Head of Product on the existing commission and payout work, gradually taking ownership of those flows as you ramp. After that, the entire financial infrastructure surface area is yours: virtual cards, payroll, expense management, international multi-currency, accounting integrations.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Own the financial infrastructure roadmap beyond the host launch: virtual cards, payroll, expense management, multi-currency payments, and accounting system integrations

• Build the compliance and risk foundation Tern needs to operate in the high-risk travel payments space: ship service fee collection for host agencies, integrated with existing commission and payout flows

• Design and ship the GL layer: invoicing, month-end close and locking, transaction exports, and transaction history views

• Ship membership fee billing for sub-agency agents under host hierarchies

• Shadow the Head of Product on existing commission and payout work for the first six months, taking targeted pieces off her plate as you ramp

• Partner with the Agency engineering squad to extend the existing reconciliation suite to enterprise-scale host workflows

WHAT YOU HAVE

• Founding or near-founding PM experience at a fintech that built payments, ledgering, and compliance infrastructure from the ground up, owning the end-to-end stack, not a single slice of it

• Deep working knowledge of general ledger architecture, payment rails, risk, and compliance- you can have a real conversation with engineers on any of them

• Shipped a payments product through a scale inflection point (10x volume, new market, new compliance regime) and know what actually breaks

• Comfortable in a small-team environment where the PM does customer research, writes specs, and unblocks engineering directly

BONUS POINTS

• Payroll product experience

• Multi-currency or international payments experience

• Worked in a high-risk vertical (travel, marketplaces, gaming, healthcare)

• Helped scale the product org at a Series A or B fintech

WHAT WE VALUE @ TERN

🌱 We're always leveling up. Whether you're deepening your craft, learning from a teammate, or embracing a new challenge, growth is core to our identity.

🧭 We act with optimistic agency. We take initiative, seek clarity, and move forward, even when the path isn't obvious. Through every peak and valley, we lead with curiosity, laughter, kindness, and resolve.

💪 We expect operational excellence. We ship value to our users every single week. We believe that compounding habits lead to sustainable productivity, consistency, and mutual trust.

Operating Principles:

👂 We deeply understand our users. At every level of the organization, we obsess about understanding those we serve and the industry we operate in.

➕ We embrace the power of and, and not now. We challenge trade-offs by asking better questions. We break hard problems into small pieces and tackle them with intention. We also know to make the hard call to say "not right now".

📣 We speak up and move forward. Everyone at Tern has a voice and a responsibility to use it. We invite healthy tension, share dissenting views early, and challenge each other with curiosity, not ego.

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ We move fast and sweat the details. Velocity matters and relentless progress beats perfection every time. But speed isn't chaos: we stay aligned, own our outcomes, and care deeply about quality.

🤣 We take the work seriously, but not ourselves. We hire kind, driven people who elevate the room. If you've got a big ego or take yourself too seriously, you won't last.

WHY THIS ROLE IS EXCITING

Travel advisors run small businesses moving real money, and most of it still runs through accounting tools built decades ago. This role owns what replaces them at Tern. You'd build the payments rails, the GL, and the service fee and membership flows that let an agency owner actually scale their business, turning Tern from a workflow tool into the financial system of record for how that business runs. Travel is a $1.6 trillion industry and the leisure back office is wide open.

WHY JOIN TERN?

• Be part of a mission-driven team transforming the travel planning space

• Work with a supportive, curious, and creative team

• Influence and shape our user success strategy from the ground up

• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package

Tern is committed to building a team that represents people from many different backgrounds and life experiences, reflecting our worldview coinciding with the users and customers we serve across the world. We prefer that you apply, so think of our postings as the start of the conversation. Take the chance — you may be a wonderful add to our Tern team, even if you don't fully match every requirement on the job description.