Senior Director, Credit Risk

The Opportunity

As Marqeta's Senior Director, Credit Risk, you will lead our underwriting team and be responsible for developing and designing strategy to help us launch and scale successful credit programs. You will be the person who scales our credit underwriting organization leveraging our early beginnings and progress to date - establishing Marqeta as a disruptive force in the credit space with our differentiated vision and approach. You will mentor and develop a world-class team of credit risk professionals and drive innovation to establish best-in-class credit strategies and underwriting models. This role requires someone who can represent Marqeta at the highest levels with customers and partners as our head of underwriting and credit risk strategy. You will work closely with internal stakeholders including Product, Risk Operations / Servicing, Finance, and Data while partnering and building strong relationships with external bank partners and customers.

We work Flexible First. This role can be performed remotely anywhere within the United States or from our headquarters in Oakland, CA. We’d love for you to join us!

The Impact You'll Have

• Scale and lead Marqeta's credit organization - this is a foundational role for our credit business
• Mentor, guide and develop a high-performing team that will scale from 2 to 10+ professionals over the next 1-2 years
• Oversee portfolio performance and account management activities across diverse portfolio types including consumer and commercial credit programs
• Build, review, and refine Marqeta's consumer and commercial underwriting models leveraging advanced statistical modeling and data science
• Proactively monitor and adjust Marqeta's credit policies based on performance and risk trends across multiple portfolio types and risk segments
• Establish credit strategies for our co-brand, consumer and commercial credit card programs that directly drive KPIs (approval rates, new accounts, loss rate, profit margin, etc.)
• Enhance underwriting and risk documentation, work with bank partners on model validation and governance, and report KPIs to senior management and external stakeholders
• Partner with product to build modern credit stacks and data strategy leveraging financial, bank, and third-party datasets to enable underwriting automation
• Represent Marqeta's credit capabilities and vision to customers and bank partners
• Provide risk consulting services to our bank partners and customers, recommending improvements to credit strategies

Who You Are

• 12-15+ years of experience in credit underwriting at major banks - you understand underwriting and portfolio performance management inside and out
• You understand both traditional banking rigor and fintech pace
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Finance, Business, Accounting, Economics, Statistics, Math or similar fields (Advanced statistical background - PhD in Statistics, Mathematics, or quantitative field strongly preferred)
• Proven track record across diverse portfolio types including:
  • Co-brand credit programs
  • Subprime lending
  • Consumer credit cards
  • Commercial credit cards
• Strong desire to "run your own shop" and build something transformative - you have the itch to create and scale, not just optimize existing programs
• Belief in Marqeta's disruptive vision for credit - you see the opportunity to build the "next big thing" in credit with an established, respected brand
• Expertise in Excel and SQL modeling plus strong programming and data analytics experience in R or Python
• Experience in capital markets (ABS, securitization, warehouse lines) and fraud management highly preferred
• Exceptional communication skills - able to represent Marqeta credibly with senior executives, customers, and partners
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and adapt to changing priorities

What Makes This Role Special

This is the foundational credit role at Marqeta - you'll help build our credit organization and execute our strategy. Work with an es