Senior Director, Catastrophe Analytics & Modeling

Ryan Specialty; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

Ryan Specialty seeks a Senior Director of Catastrophe Modeling to lead analytics for Ryan Alternative Risks. You will own technical execution, tooling, and team delivery, translating model output into underwriting guidance and program strategies.

This role sits at the nexus of modeling science, data engineering, and underwriting leadership. You will shape roadmaps, mentor a multi-disciplinary team, and drive innovation in parametric, facultative, and treaty structures while collaborating with

Qualifications

• 8+ years in catastrophe modeling or related data engineering with leadership experience.
• Deep hands-on proficiency in RMS and AIR Touchstone with outputs and batch processing.
• Strong SQL skills and automation experience with Python, R, VBA, and Alteryx.
• Ability to translate model output into underwriting guidance and decisions.
• Proven leadership for real-time catastrophe event response and cross-functional coordination.
• Experience coordinating portfolio rollups and external deliverables to carriers or reinsurers.
• Excellent communication skills for presenting technical analysis to underwriting and executives.
• Experience pricing or modeling ART structures (parametric, facultative, treaty, multi-year).

Responsibilities

• Build, manage, and mentor a team blending catastrophe modeling analysts and automation developers.
• Set the technical roadmap and priorities for cat modeling, data engineering, and reporting tooling.
• Bridge catastrophe analytics and underwriting leadership to translate model output into appetite decisions.
• Represent catastrophe risk analytics in executive and reinsurance discussions.
• Champion ART mandate and develop fluency in parametric, facultative, and treaty reinsurance.
• Maintain and grow pricing capability across ART structures for underwriting strategy.
• Oversee portfolio rollups and deliverables to external carriers and reinsurers.
• Lead research into advanced analytics and evaluate new modeling tools and vendor updates.
• Own vendor strategy for RMS and AIR and manage tooling evolution.
• Direct data engineering: ETL pipelines, automation utilities, and cloud-based analytics adoption.
• Set data quality standards, SOPs, and documentation across the team.
• Lead catastrophe event response with rapid exposure summaries and loss estimates.

Skills

Team leadership

Mentoring

Underwriting guidance

Event response

Cross-functional

Stakeholder comms

Model output guidance

Strategic leadership

Tools

RMS

AIR

SQL

Python

R

VBA

Alteryx

Azure Databricks

PySpark

Delta Lake

Job description

Ryan Specialty seeks a Senior Director of Catastrophe Modeling to lead analytics for Ryan Alternative Risks. You will own technical execution, tooling, and team delivery, translating model output into underwriting guidance and program strategies.

This role sits at the nexus of modeling science, data engineering, and underwriting leadership. You will shape roadmaps, mentor a multi-disciplinary team, and drive innovation in parametric, facultative, and treaty structures while collaborating with