Before coming to the Noble Research Institute in 2008, Payne was the survey operations manager for 3001 Geospatial Company. He supervised a crew of GIS analysts working across the country collecting GIS data for several governmental contracts. Prior to that, he worked as an aerial data acquisition specialist collecting various types of remotely sensed data.
Payne grew up in the small town of Gene Autry, Oklahoma, just northeast of Ardmore, Oklahoma.