Credit Risk Strategy Manager / Senior Manager
At a glance
Senior Risk & Financial Compliance role at Cardless. San Francisco · full-time · $150,000–$210,000 base.
financeroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Set the rules for raising or lowering credit limits and controlling exposure while balancing growth, risk and customer experience
- Shape balance transfer and spend programs, then run experiments to measure their effects on portfolio and partner outcomes
- Forecast losses and early delinquencies, and build automated dashboards that track portfolio performance
- Turn model findings into operating rules with data science, and work with engineering to launch credit line strategies
- Align policy reviews and approvals with compliance, legal and bank partners, and share results with brand partners
What you bring
- Five to ten years developing credit strategies, managing portfolios or underwriting for a financial institution, fintech or payments company
- Strong SQL skills and analytical experience building credit strategies, measuring portfolio results and spotting new risk patterns
- Experience using credit models and decision systems in live production settings
Who this fits
This role suits a senior credit professional with consumer portfolio management experience; credit limits, utilization and loss forecasting are especially relevant. You’ll report to the Head of Credit and collaborate across data, engineering, compliance and partner teams. The position is based in San Francisco, with at least three office days each week.
From the employer
About Cardless
Cardless is building the infrastructure for the world's best companies to design, build, and launch financial products. Companies like Coinbase and Bilt use Cardless to create credit cards that feel entirely their own. In an industry where branded financial products usually mean shared logos and shared control, Cardless is built to disappear. Our APIs and components shape the journey from the first application to every purchase, reward, and moment of support that follows, while we handle lending, compliance, and operations behind the scenes.
In September 2025, we raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital, bringing our total funding to $170 million. The team is over 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026.
We're looking for kind, humble people with high standards and low egos. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We see what could be improved, make it so, and leave every product, system, and team better than we found it.
About the Role
We're looking for a Credit Risk Strategy Manager or Senior Manager to own the credit strategy for managing risk across our existing cardholder portfolio. This is a highly analytical, strategy-forward role focused on building the decisioning framework that determines how we extend additional credit, manage exposure, and optimize portfolio performance as well as ensuring the tools, data, and processes behind those decisions are best-in-class.
Reporting to our Head of Credit, you'll work at the intersection of data, tooling, and operations to optimize customer-level credit decisions as Cardless scales. You'll own the strategy for actions such as credit line increases and decreases, balance transfer offers, and other portfolio management levers, while building the measurement infrastructure needed to continuously improve performance for a rapidly growing portfolio.
What You'll Own
Portfolio Strategy & Signal Development
Define the logic and thresholds for credit line increases, decreases, and exposure management — balancing portfolio growth, credit risk, and customer experience
Develop the strategy and implementation for new programs such as balance transfers and ongoing spend campaigns
Build structured feedback loops between portfolio performance and policy triggers to drive continuous refinement
Develop processes for loss forecasting, leading edge delinquencies, and other methods to understand future portfolio performance
Build and maintain automated dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPIs) around portfolio performance
Design and execute A/B tests to evaluate new strategies, balancing product performance with customer and partner satisfaction
Cross-Functional Partnership
Partner with Data Science to define feature requirements, evaluate model performance, and translate model outputs into operational policy
Partner with engineering to build and implement new strategies such as proactive credit line increase execution and reactive credit line increase APIs
Work with Compliance and Legal to ensure portfolio management policies comply with ECOA, FCRA, Fair Lending, and other applicable regulations
Work together with brand partners to balance company and partner goals and share out performance and results
Work with bank partners to document, present and get approval for new policies/models
What We're Looking For
5–10 years of experience in credit risk strategy, portfolio management, or underwriting at a financial institution, fintech, or payments company.
Deep expertise in consumer credit portfolio management – experience with credit line management, utilization dynamics, and loss forecasting is a plus
Experience leveraging behavioral and bureau data to develop/optimize strategies
Strong SQL skills and experience using analytics to build and evaluate credit strategies, track portfolio performance, and identify emerging risk patterns.
Familiarity working with credit risk models (including regression and tree-based machine learning) and decision engines in a production environment.
Excellent communication skills — you can translate complex credit tradeoffs into clear recommendations for executives, partners, and compliance teams
Proactive, bias-to-action mindset: you ask the right questions, align stakeholders, and drive decisions forward.
Compensation
This role has an annual starting salary range of $150,000 - $210,000 + equity + benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors, including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.
Benefits
We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits:
💸 Meaningful Start-up equity
🏥 100% health, vision & dental primary coverage
➕ 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage
🍱 Catered lunches
🚎 $250/month Commuter benefit
👶 Parental leave
✈️ Team building events & happy hours
🌴 Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year
🖥️ Apple equipment
💸 401k plan
Location
We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. We’re in the office at least three days a week, and most of us are there more than that, because we do our best thinking and building together in person. We’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited to be there alongside the team.