Senior Manager, Credit Risk Strategy

GoCardless; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 76,000 - 114,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global payment company is looking for a Credit Risk Strategy Senior Manager to lead the design and execution of its credit risk strategy. This role demands significant experience in credit risk strategy within payments or fintech, and the ability to collaborate cross-functionally. The ideal candidate will manage strategic oversight of credit risk initiatives while ensuring alignment with business objectives. Competitive salary and benefits are offered in a hybrid working environment.

Benefits

Wellbeing support

Work Away Scheme

Hybrid Working

Equity

Parental leave

Generous holidays and wellness days

Qualifications

• Significant experience in credit risk strategy, ideally in payments, fintech, or financial services.
• Strong understanding of credit exposure in B2B environments.
• Proven ability to partner with operational teams to drive outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise credit risk strategy for GoCardless.
• Set the strategic direction for managing credit losses.
• Collaborate with Product, Legal, and Engineering teams to define risk-mitigating features.

Skills

Credit risk strategy

Cross-functional collaboration

Data analysis

B2B credit exposure

Leadership

Education

Relevant degree or equivalent experience

Tools

SQL

Job description

About Us at GoCardless

GoCardless is a global bank payment company. Over 100,000 businesses, from start-ups to household names, use GoCardless to collect and send payments through direct debit, real-time payments and open banking.

GoCardless processes US$130bn+ of payments annually, across 30+ countries; helping customers collect and send both recurring and one-off payments, without the chasing, stress or expensive fees. We use AI-powered solutions to improve payment success and reduce fraud. And, with open banking connectivity to over 2,500 banks, we help our customers make faster, more informed decisions.

We are headquartered in the UK, with additional offices in Australia, France, Ireland, Latvia, Portugaland the United States.

At GoCardless, we're all about supporting you! We’re committed to making our hiring process inclusive and accessible. If you need extra support or adjustments, reach out to your Talent Partner — we’re here to help!

And remember: we don’t expect you to meet every single requirement. If you’re excited by this role, we encourage you to apply!

Merchant Operations at GoCardless

This role will sit in the Merchant Operations Group. We’re responsible for a large number of GoCardless’ highest-throughput processes and systems, such as KYC and onboarding, customer support, payment operations, risk operations, billing and more. We need to ensure these run efficiently so that GoCardless can scale effectively & drive healthy margins. Everything we do is in service to our customers - both external and internal, wherever their location.

The role

We’re hiring a Credit Risk Strategy Senior Manager to lead the design, execution, and evolution of GoCardless’s credit risk strategy. This person will be accountable for credit loss outcomes across our business and for ensuring we have the right strategies, structures, and controls in place to manage credit risk effectively.

This role does not manage day-to-day underwriting or credit assessments – that work sits within our Credit Underwriting team, part of Shared Services. Instead, you’ll work closely with them and other teams, such as our product organisation, internal operations product teams, and commercial teams to ensure our credit policies and frameworks are robust, scalable, and commercially aligned.

You’ll bring strategic oversight and thought leadership to credit risk – from new product risk design to portfolio-level mitigation strategies – helping shape GoCardless’s risk posture as we scale.

What excites you

Managing our credit strategy & governance

• Own the enterprise credit risk strategy for GoCardless, ensuring it aligns with business objectives and risk appetite.
• Set the strategic direction for managing and mitigating credit losses across all geographies, products, and customer segments.
• Define and maintain GoCardless’s credit risk appetite and tolerance levels, and track performance against them.

Helping us launch new products & enter new markets

• Act as the lead credit stakeholder in new product development and market expansion initiatives.
• Collaborate with Product, Legal, and Engineering teams to define risk-mitigating product features (e.g. reserve models, caps, loss provisioning).
• Ensure credit exposure is appropriately scoped and managed in early-stage designs.

Developing strategies to manage portfolio risk

• Develop strategic frameworks for managing credit risk across our customer base, tailored to both SMBs and enterprise merchants.
• Analyse trends in portfolio performance and develop recommendations to reduce loss exposure.
• Work with cross-functional teams to implement interventions (e.g. policy changes, automation, product levers).

Building cross-functional partnerships

• Partner closely with the Credit Underwriting team (in Shared Services) to ensure strategic alignment between credit policy, execution, and performance outcomes.
• Collaborate with Finance, Legal, Product, Engineering, and Commercial teams to embed credit risk into key business decisions and systems.
• Influence and educate senior stakeholders on credit risk considerations and trade-offs.

What excites us

• Significant experience in credit risk strategy, ideally in payments, fintech, or financial services.
• Strong understanding of credit exposure in B2B environments.
• Both strategic yet detailed in your thinking with the ability to interpret complex risk signals and translate them into clear, scalable approaches.
• Proven ability to partner with operational teams to drive outcomes – you’ve worked with underwriting teams before. .
• Comfortable working cross-functionally and influencing at senior levels across a matrixed organisation.
• Data-savvy and comfortable working with risk, finance, or performance metrics to inform decisions.
• We’d love you to have come from a data background and have skills in SQL, but this isn’t a hard requirement.
• Experience managing a small but high impact team - this role will have management responsibility for a small team of analysts.

We don’t expect you to meet every requirement. If you’re excited by this role, we encourage you to apply.

Base salary range: £76,000 - £114,000

Base salary ranges are based on role, job level, location, and market data. Please note that whilst we strive to offer competitive compensation, our approach is to pay between the minimum and the mid-point (£76,000 - £95,000) of the pay range until performance can be assessed in role. Offers will take into account level of experience, interview assessment, budgets and parity between you and fellow employees at GoCardless doing similar work.

The Good Stuff!

• Wellbeing: Dedicated support and medical cover to keep you healthy.
• Work Away Scheme: Work from anywhere for up to 90 days in any 12-month period.
• Hybrid Working: Our hybrid model offers flexibility, with in-office days determined by your team.
• Equity: All permanently employed GeeCees get equity to share in our success.
• Parental leave: Tailored leave to support your life's great adventure.
• Time Off: Generous holidays, 3 volunteer days, and 4 wellness days annually.

Life at GoCardless

We're an organisation defined by ourvalues; We start with why before we begin any project, to ensure it’s aligned with our mission. We make it happen, working with urgency and taking personal accountability for getting things done. We act with integrity, always. We care deeply about what we do and we know it's essential that we be humble whilst we do it. Our Values form part of the GoCardless DNA, and are used to not only help us nurture and develop our culture, but to deliver impactful work that will help us to achieve our vision.

Diversity & Inclusion

We’re building the payment network of the future, and to achieve our goal, we need a diverse team with a range of perspectives and experiences. As of July 2024, here’s where we stand:

• 45% identify as women
• 23% identify as Black, Asian, Mixed, or Other
• 10% identify as LGBTQIA+
• 9% identify as neurodiverse
• 2% identify as disabled

If you want to learn more, you can read about our Employee Resource Groups and objectives here as well as our latest D&I Report

Sustainability at GoCardless

We’re committed to reducing ourenvironmental impact and leaving a sustainable world for future generations. As co-founders of the Tech Zero coalition , we’re working towards a climate-positive future. Check out our sustainability action plan here.

Find out more about Life at GoCardless via X, Instagram and LinkedIn.