Senior Credit Risk Manager - Payments

We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam.

Plaid Transfer makes moving money fast, simple, and secure, helping businesses deliver seamless payment experiences their customers love. Plaid Transfer simplifies money movement with a single API for all bank rails, robust operational tools and liquidity management features, and embedded risk checks to help prevent payment returns and fraud.

On the Transfer Operations team, we ensure that money movement at Plaid is not only fast and reliable, but also financially safe and scalable. We are responsible for managing the operational and financial risks inherent in bank-based payments, particularly ACH debits where Plaid may be exposed to customer returns.

We build and operate the frameworks that allow Plaid Transfer to grow responsibly. This includes defining and enforcing credit risk policies, monitoring customer activity and portfolio exposure, responding to risk events, and partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Finance to translate risk decisions into production systems.

Our mission is to enable Transfer’s growth while protecting Plaid’s balance sheet. We work at the intersection of payments, risk, and operations, balancing speed and customer experience with prudent risk management, so Plaid can confidently support new products, customers, and business models at scale.

As a Senior Credit Risk Manager on the Transfer Operations team, you will own the portfolio-level credit risk management of Plaid Transfer, helping ensure that money movement remains fast, reliable, and financially safe as the business scales.

You will design and operate Plaid’s Transfer credit risk underwriting program. You’ll build and evolve underwriting policies, scorecards, and playbooks for customer onboarding, periodic reviews, and exception handling, especially for complex use cases such as platforms, lenders, crypto, and customers requesting faster settlement or liquidity fronting.

You will make high-impact risk decisions every day. You’ll evaluate customer solvency, liquidity, and business-model risk, determine appropriate holds, limits, reserves, and prefunding requirements, and partner closely with Operations to manage escalations and incidents when risk signals emerge.

You will bring structure and visibility to portfolio risk. You’ll monitor aggregate exposure across the Transfer customer base, identify concentration and emerging risks, and produce clear executive reporting on exposure, reserves, and loss forecasts in partnership with Finance. You will enable teams to execute risk consistently at scale. You’ll train and support customer oversight teams, create self-serve documentation and guidance, and work with Product and Engineering to translate risk policy into tooling and automated controls.

You will be a trusted partner across the organization. You’ll collaborate with Product, Engineering, Finance, AML, Compliance, and senior leadership to balance growth, customer experience, and risk, helping Plaid confidently support new products and customers while protecting the company’s balance sheet.

Responsibilities

• Own Transfer’s credit risk underwriting program, including policies, scorecards, and playbooks for customer onboarding, periodic reviews, and exception handling enabling consistent, high quality risk decisions as the portfolio scales.
• Manage portfolio-level financial exposure across ACH, RTP, and FedNow by monitoring customer activity, return behavior, liquidity risk, and solvency signals, reducing the likelihood of unexpected losses and balance-sheet shocks.
• Evaluate complex and higher-risk use cases, such as crypto, lenders, platforms, and liquidity-fronted customers allowing Plaid to support new business models safely.
• Partner with Transfer Operations on day-to-day risk decisions and escalations, including setting and adjusting holds, reserves, limits, and pre-funding requirements ensuring fast, coordinated responses to emerging risk events.
• Develop and maintain executive-level risk reporting, including exposure tracking, reserve adequacy, and loss forecasting, improving leadership visibility and decision-making.
• Enable operational scale through training and documentation, creating self-serve guides and decision frameworks for customer oversight teams driving consistency and reducing operational risk as volume grows.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, AML/Compliance, and Finance to translate risk policy into tooling, workflows, and automated controls embedding risk management directly into the Transfer platform.
• Continuously improve risk frameworks and tooling by incorporating data insights, post-mortems, and industry best practices, keeping Plaid’s risk posture aligned with evolving threats and growth objectives.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in credit risk underwriting, financial risk, or exposure management within a payments processor, fintech, or lending institution.
• Hands-on experience owning or designing credit underwriting frameworks, including policies, scorecards, onboarding standards, periodic reviews, and exception handling.
• Deep understanding of ACH payments and return risk, including settlement timing, unauthorized returns, and liquidity exposure; experience with multiple payment rails is a plus.
• Proven ability to assess customer solvency and business-model risk, particularly for startups, fintechs, platforms, lenders, or crypto businesses.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to evaluate portfolio-level exposure, concentration risk, and loss scenarios
• Experience building and maintaining executive-level risk reporting, dashboards, and KPIs (e.g., exposure, reserves, loss forecasting).
• Demonstrated judgment and decision-making ability in high-stakes, ambiguous risk scenarios involving customer exceptions or tradeoffs between growth and risk.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills, with experience partnering with Operations, Product, Compliance/AML, Finance, and Engineering.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex risk concepts into actionable guidance and policies for non-risk stakeholders.

Nice-to have:

• Prior experience in credit risk or underwriting at a large-scale payments processor, particularly with portfolio-level exposure management.
• Domain expertise in higher-risk or complex use cases, such as crypto, gaming, lenders, platforms, or marketplace business models.
• Experience working with or building risk mitigation mechanisms such as reserves, pre-funding, hold-time optimization, and transaction limits.
• Familiarity with AML/KYC frameworks and how credit risk underwriting complements compliance and fraud controls.
• Experience partnering closely with Product and Engineering teams to operationalize risk policies through tooling, workflows, or automated controls.
• Background in financial modeling, loss forecasting, or stress testing for payments or credit portfolios.
• Experience scaling or formalizing a new risk function or program, including documentation, training, and process design.
• Comfort operating in early-stage or rapidly evolving environments where policies and tooling are still being built.
• Prior mentorship or informal leadership experience, including coaching analysts or influencing without direct authority.

USD 124,800 - 232,800 a year

Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid!

Plaid is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion or religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, military or veteran status, disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Plaid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance with your application or interviews due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations@plaid.com.

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