Credit Analysis Lead - São Paulo (Hybrid)

Clara; São Paulo; Hybrid; BRL 350,000 - 520,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock Options (ESOP)

Annual learning budget

Hybrid work arrangement

Job summary

Clara is seeking a Credit Analysis Lead to own the Brazil credit analysis function. You will lead a team of analysts, triage requests, and ensure fast, accurate credit decisions. You will collaborate with Sales, Risk, Product/Data and Collections to keep the flow healthy and scalable.

You will drive policy feedback, monitor metrics, and build lightweight automations to reduce manual work, while maintaining high standards and clear documentation.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in credit risk / corporate credit analysis in Brazil.
• 2+ years leading or coordinating a credit analysis team.
• Deep working knowledge of Brazilian credit bureau data and scoring.
• Experience with credit policy and approval alçadas.
• Comfort with data: advanced spreadsheets plus SQL and BI tools.
• Ability to build small automations or internal tools to remove manual work.
• Strong written communication and attention to detail.

Responsibilities

• Lead the credit analysis team: coaching, hiring, onboarding, calibration and SLA planning.
• Own daily desk operations: intake, triage, prioritization and turnaround-time SLAs.
• Run the credit approval cadence and act as escalation point for complex cases.
• Drive automation and simplification with product/data/engineering to scale workflow.

Skills

Credit risk

Financial analysis

Cash-flow analysis

Team leadership

Data analysis

SQL

Looker

Tableau

Automation scripting

Tools

Looker

Metabase

Tableau

Google Workspace

Zendesk

HubSpot

Job description

Clara is the leading platform in Latin America for companies to execute and manage every payment operation. More than 50,000 leading and fast-growing businesses run on our corporate cards, bill pay, financing and B2B payments, and in 2025 the Financial Times named Clara the region’s fastest-growing company. We’re passionate about helping every company we work with become more effective—and, through that, raising the region’s competitiveness. We’re ~400 people, backed by Notable Capital, Coatue, Kaszek, monashees, DST Global, ICONIQ, General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs, among others.

What you'll do

We’re looking for a Credit Analysis Lead to own the credit analysis function for our B2B clients in Brazil. You’ll lead a team of credit analysts who assess companies and recommend credit lines, and you’ll be accountable for the quality, speed, and consistency of every credit decision that comes through the desk. Your ownership starts when a credit request enters the credit desk (new client, limit increase, renewal, or triggered review) and covers everything until a credit decision is issued (approve / decline / amount and terms) and later maintained (renewals, limit adjustments, periodic reviews). Other teams own the steps before and after that path — but you still own making sure the whole flow works: if something upstream delays a case or something downstream breaks the experience, it’s your problem to raise and get fixed. You’ll partner closely with Sales, Risk, Product/Data and Collections to keep the credit flow fast, the portfolio healthy and the analysis workflow scalable

• Lead the credit analysis team
  • Lead, coach and develop a team of credit analysts: hiring, onboarding, training, calibration and capacity/SLA planning.
  • Own daily desk operations: intake and triage of requests, prioritization by segment and exposure, queue management and turnaround-time SLAs.
  • Run the credit approval cadence and act as escalation point for borderline, complex or high-exposure cases.
• Perform and quality-review B2B credit analysis
  • Analyze Brazilian companies’ financial health: financial statements and cash flow (DRE, balanço, DFC), revenue and margin trends, leverage, liquidity, working capital cycle and seasonality.
  • Read the whole economic group: parent and related entities, sócios and partners, cross-exposure and consolidated exposure.
  • Interpret Brazilian credit bureau and public data, understanding the limits and false positives of each source.
  • Issue or recommend credit limits and terms within a delegated authority (alçada), documenting the rationale clearly; elevate above authority.
  • Handle review triggers: renewals, limit increases/decreases, negative news, and deterioration in related accounts.
• Be the voice of the front line for credit strategy
  • Act as the closest point to real client cases: surface patterns, edge cases and segment realities back to the teams that own credit policy, scorecards and portfolio strategy.
  • Give structured, data-backed feedback on where policy, rules or score cutoffs don’t match what the analysis actually shows — and propose concrete adjustments.
  • Track and improve the metrics that matter for your team: approval rate, TAT, override rate and decline-reason distribution.
  • Flag early signs of deterioration in the cases your team touches, so the owners of portfolio monitoring can act on them.
• Drive automation and simplification
  • Partner with Product, Data and Engineering to automate bureau pulls, decision rules and scorecards, and to simplify the analyst workflow so the team scales without adding headcount.
  • Continuously re-draw the line between what gets auto-approved and what an analyst must review.
  • Build your own analyses and lightweight tools (AI-assisted coding, scripts, no-code/low-code) to take manual work out of your team’s day-to-day — you don’t need to be an engineer, but you should be able to ship something yourself.

Who you are

“We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.”

Must haves:

• 5+ years in credit risk / corporate credit analysis in Brazil, with hands‑on financial‑statement and cash‑flow analysis.
• 2+ years leading or coordinating a credit analysis team (manager, coordinator or supervisor), with a track record of developing analysts.
• Deep working knowledge of Brazilian credit bureau data and scoring, including what each source does and doesn’t tell you.
• Experience working within credit policy and approval alçadas, with a strong instinct for when a case deserves to be challenged.
• Comfort with data: advanced spreadsheets plus, ideally, SQL and a BI tool (Looker, Metabase, Tableau) to pull and validate your own numbers.
• Curious and hands‑on with tooling: able to build your own small automations, scripts or internal tools (AI-assisted coding, no-code/low-code) to remove manual work from your team. We’re not hiring an engineer, but we do expect you to ship.
• Strong written communication and attention to detail; able to defend decisions to commercial and risk stakeholders.

Nice to haves:

• Fintech or B2B credit scale‑up experience in LATAM; lending to PMEs and mid‑market.
• Exposure to scorecard/model development, monitoring and credit model governance.
• Familiarity with Google Workspace, Zendesk and HubSpot (or similar).
• Spanish (or willingness to learn).

Where we work:

This is a hybrid role: you'll split your time between the office, customers and home. We don't set a minimum number of office days for most roles — you'll spend time in the office naturally, and most days during your ramp-up or when your leader asks.

Why Clara

• A high talent-density team driven to make an impact in Latin America — low ego, high ownership.
• Competitive salary and stock options (ESOP) from day one.
• An annual learning budget and accelerated development paths.
• English is our working language, with Spanish and Portuguese every day.

How we work

• Clarity — Open and direct communication: we say what we mean and give context where it matters.
• Simplicity — If it can be simpler, it should be.
• Ownership — We own everything we do, end to end. When something needs to happen, we don't wait.
• Pride — We hold ourselves to a high standard, and it shows in what we deliver.
• ABC (Always Be Changing) — We adapt fast, embrace change, and keep learning.
• Inclusivity — Diverse ideas, stories and perspectives build a better Clara.