Senior Director, Portfolio Risk Management

Job description

SENIOR DIRECTOR, PORTFOLIO RISK MANAGEMENT WHO WE ARE At Trustly, we're building a smarter, faster, and more secure financial future by revolutionizing the world of payments. As a global leader in Open Banking Payments, we are establishing Pay by Bank as the new standard at checkout, providing unparalleled freedom, speed, and ease to millions of consumers and merchants worldwide. Our Ambition: To build the world’s most disruptive payment network and redefine what the payment experience should feel like. Trustly is a global team of innovators, collaborators, and doers. If you are driven by a strong sense of purpose and thrive in a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and high-growth environment, join us and be part of a team that’s transforming the way the world pays. About the team The Data team at Trustly is the backbone of our decision-making and product innovation. We are a global, multidisciplinary collective of Software Engineers, Data Engineers, Machine Learning Specialists, Scientists, and Analysts who believe that data is more than just rows and columns - it is the fuel for a more transparent financial ecosystem. We operate at the intersection of high-scale engineering and deep financial intelligence. Our team processes millions of transactions in real time, turning complex Open Banking signals into seamless payment experiences. We pride ourselves on a culture of intellectual curiosity, technical excellence, and extreme ownership. About the role Trustly guarantees payments in North America. Every approval decision drives revenue for Trustly and for our customers, and every one of them also carries risk and loss. We are looking for a portfolio risk leader to own that balance across our business domains and to turn risk management into a growth driver, in partnership with our commercial and customer service teams. This function owns segment risk management, the customer-facing risk solutions consulting team, and risk operations and compliance. You will partner closely with Risk Data Science, Risk Product and Risk Engineering, who own the risk models and the engine your decisions will run on, and you will be the senior risk voice with our executive team and our largest customers. WHAT YOU’LL DO OWN THE LOSS AND APPROVAL OUTCOME - Own consumer transaction loss, merchant credit exposure and approval rates across customer segments. - Decide where to tighten and where to loosen, grounded in loss attribution, and balance approval rate against loss. - Own change control on the decision set: rules, thresholds, score cutoffs and non-standard deal terms carry a quantified loss and approval impact before launch. Define guarantee tier eligibility and the economics behind each tier. - Monitor return performance against network rules and internal limits, across unauthorized, administrative and funding-related return reasons. SET THE RULES AND UNDERWRITING STANDARDS - Own rules and thresholds across segments, including the per-merchant risk settings in the risk engine. - Set and document merchant underwriting criteria: onboarding, KYB standards, merchant risk tiering, monitoring triggers and offboarding. - Establish the merchant approval authority framework in partnership with Finance and Commercial. - Direct incident response for major risk events, including the escalation path into Legal, Commercial and our banking partners. LEAD RISK DISCUSSIONS WITH CUSTOMERS - Set risk appetite and pre-authorization requirements early in a deal so they shape the terms. - Present the risk position and the trade-off on the largest and most complex deals: approval rate and expected loss. - Own the risk inputs into pricing: expected loss by customer, guarantee tier recommendation, and the exposure and collateral terms on non-standard deals. - Partner with Customer Success to bring the risk view into customer meetings and quarterly business reviews. Provide regular risk reporting and propose remediation where return performance drifts. - Be accountable for customer risk relationships at executive level. LEAD THE FUNCTION AND PARTNER ACROSS TRUSTLY - Build and develop the team across segment risk management, customer-facing risk solutions consulting, and risk operations and compliance. - Run risk execution end to end: merchant underwriting operations, the alert and manual decision queues to SLA, representment, recovery and collections, and first-line compliance execution with controls testing. - Set the agenda for the Risk Committee, and present loss performance, emerging risk and the case for any change to senior and executive stakeholders. - Partner with Risk Data Science on how model scores are used in the rules, and with Risk Product and Risk Engineering on what the engine needs to support next. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 12+ years in payments, lending or banking risk, including at least 5 years leading teams across more than one function. - Ownership of a loss budget and a