Summer Associate Internship (Digital Payments - Operations Analyst)

Overview

Digital Payments is a division of the Savings & Membership Department with a focus on providing personalized, scalable, and secure Money Movement experiences that enable Navy Federal to continuously exceed members' evolving payment expectations. Our objective is to create integrated payment experiences, improving the speed and transparency of members' money movement. To enable payment innovation, we work horizontally across the organization and form strategic (third-party) partnerships; ensuring Navy Federal remains top-of-wallet and top-of-mind for members' payment needs.

Today, Digital Payments currently provide money movement capabilities via ACH, wires, Western unions, and cashier's checks. Strategically, we are driving towards providing additional enhanced faster payments to meet the needs of our members. Fast payments are payments in which the transmission of the payment message and the availability of final funds to the payee occur in real-time, or near real-time. Digital Payments implemented real-time payment capabilities in 2023, via the RTP network (Receive, Corporate Send, Request for Payment) and FedNow in 2024. In addition to these new real-time capabilities, Digital Payments will also be providing support for Zelle, Web Bill Pay, and internal transfer operations.

The Summer Associate will work in a flexible hybrid manner. This role will be a member of the Digital Payments Operations group but with strong connections and synergies with the Product Strategy team and Business Operations Analysis team. Responsibilities will include analyzing historical data, implementation schedules, and industry benchmarks and trends to identify and recommend optimal operational support structures across all operational capabilities.

The Summer Associate will work closely with both operational areas and product strategy to understand current and future processes and support needs for a streamlined effective operational structure. Areas of focus may include evaluating a faster payments landscape, optimizing workforce forecasts, and integrating support capabilities (e.g., reporting, quality assurance, audits, risk). It will be essential for the team member in this position to be strong analytically, with an ability to bridge strategy and operations, and be able to connect the details in the data to the bigger picture business trends to identify data-driven recommendations.

The Summer Associate Program is a 12-week internship program beginning in May 2026 and ending in August 2026. Students will work on impactful projects and meaningful work during their internship. To qualify for this position, applicants must be currently pursuing a degree from an accredited college or university and have an anticipated graduation date of December 2026 or later.

Responsibilities

• Assess the Digital Payments Operations current organization structure against future core strategies, and capabilities roadmap and identify trends and emerging requirements that will require operational support.
• Analyze current production data and industry best practices to understand, predict, and identify opportunities to influence production optimization, fraud/scam identification and minimization, training, upskilling/reskilling personnel, and impact on support operations (e.g., risk, reporting, audits)
• Understand the Navy Federal business unit dependencies across and how the Digital Payments core strategies and future operational design are affected.
• Develop recommendations for team formations, shift patterns, lines of reporting, reporting, and communication strategies that align with strategic initiatives and future capability implementation.
• Develop and present proposals on findings from data analysis and research to management up to and including senior executives.
• Become integrated into and participate in the day-to-day strategy, analysis, and operations of the team.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in a related field
• Experience with operational research, analysis, organizational design, and process improvement
• Experience using data and analytic tools such as Excel, PowerBI, SQL, SPSS Modeler, R, or Tableau
• Good communication and presentation skills
• Comfort with organizational design, data gathering and analysis, and telling stories
• Ability to work independently and think outside of the box
• Strong strategic, operational, and analytical thinking skills
• Basic knowledge of financial services/payments is a plus

Hours: Monday - Friday 8:00AM - 4:30PM

Location: 820 Follin Lane, Vienna, VA 22180 | 5550 Heritage Oaks Dr Pensacola, FL 32526

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