---
title: 'Credit Risk Strategy Manager / Senior Manager at Cardless'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/credit-risk-strategy-manager-senior-manager-cardless-san-francisco-0g42a2ee2ehx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Credit Risk Strategy Manager / Senior Manager at Cardless

- **Company:** Cardless
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$210k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cardless/ccbe8c98-94ab-4cc3-b0d8-702ae255bfcb/application

**Skills:** SQL, Credit Risk Strategy, Portfolio Management, Underwriting, Consumer Credit Portfolio Management, Credit Line Management, Loss Forecasting, Behavioral Data Analysis, Bureau Data Analysis, Credit Risk Models, Regression Analysis, Tree-based Machine Learning, Decision Engines, A/B Testing, Dashboarding, Utilization Dynamics, Credit Risk Modeling

> Own the credit strategy for the existing cardholder portfolio, building decision-making frameworks to manage risk, optimize performance, and extend credit. The role involves developing signal models, partnering with data science and engineering teams, and ensuring regulatory compliance while driving continuous impro...

## Job description

At Cardless, we’re building a credit card and loyalty platform that consumer businesses use to engage their customers. We’ve launched 14 credit cards, including for Coinbase, Alibaba, and Qatar Airways. We help businesses bring imaginative card programs to life, and have pioneered technology to embed credit card features natively into their products. We value curiosity, humility, and intensity — we move fast and take ownership. This is a place where a motivated, resourceful individual can have an enormous impact on our trajectory. We're headquartered in San Francisco, and have raised about $90M in equity funding from top venture capital firms and angels.

The Job 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 headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in the Mission District. 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 the Financial District. We welcome employees who want to work from this office; we offer additional benefits to those who do, and relocation assistance to those who'd like to. We regularly bring our team together for offsites & trips, about every 2 months, both for fun and for work. We cover all travel & lodging in these cases.

## About Cardless

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Cardless provides an embedded credit card platform with modular APIs and components that enable companies to build and launch branded, full-stack credit card programs.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C, led by Activant Capital, November 2024)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Scott Kazmierowicz (Co-Founder & CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Financial technology – embedded credit cards / co-branded credit card programs
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprise brands and high-growth companies (e.g., Coinbase, Bilt, Alibaba, Qatar Airways) that want to offer native credit card experiences to their customers
- **Mission or purpose**: Empower companies to ship credit like they ship product – with full control over how it works, looks, and grows.

## Products & Services
- **Embedded Credit Platform (APIs & Pre-built Components)**: A set of modular tools including Application flow, Checkout integration, Card management, Transaction disputes, fraud detection, and compliance (KYC/AML). Companies can embed approvals, rewards, and card management directly into their own app or website. [cardless.com/platform]
- **End-to-End Program Operations**: Cardless handles ongoing program management, customer support, transaction processing, settlement, card production, and compliance (PCI DSS Level 1 certified). [cardless.com/platform]
- **Decisioning & Feedback Loop**: Combines customer behavior data with network-level signals for underwriting, fraud detection, and reward optimization – adapts in real time. [cardless.com/platform]

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metrics**:
  - Annual Revenue: $9.8M (estimated, LinkedIn)
  - Total Funding: $195M across 7 rounds (as of 2024)
  - Employees: 41 (36.7% YoY growth)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Activant Capital (led Series C), Greycroft, Accomplice, i80 Group, Amex Ventures [linkedin.com, cbinsights.com]
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 36.7% in the last year
  - 23 active job postings (+91.7% quarterly growth)
  - Partnerships with major brands: Coinbase, Bilt, Alibaba, Qatar Airways
  - Launched international presence in Saudi Arabia

## Competitive Advantages
- **True embedded credit, not white-label**: APIs and customizable components allow full control over UX and brand experience, rather than a static co-brand card.
- **Real-time data feedback loop**: Combines program-level credit data with user behavior for dynamic underwriting, fraud detection, and reward optimization.
- **Full-stack operations**: Covers compliance, card production, customer support, and regulatory requirements (PCI DSS Level 1), reducing go-to-market complexity.
- **Trusted by high-profile partners**: Real-world deployments with Coinbase, Bilt, Alibaba, and Qatar Airways provide credibility and network effects.

## Strategic Focus
- **Deepen platform capabilities**: Continue building modular components and improving the data feedback loop to help partners optimize engagement.
- **Expand enterprise pipeline**: Onboard more large consumer brands seeking to launch or upgrade co-branded credit programs.
- **Scale international operations**: Already in Saudi Arabia; likely expansion into other regions, replicating the Qatarr Airways and Alibaba models.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Work Style**: Cardless believes the best work is done in person. Office in San Francisco with daily lunch provided (dinner for late workers) and $250/month transportation reimbursement for in-office employees. [cardless.com/careers]
- **Compensation & Perks**: Competitive salary, meaningful equity, 401(k) plan, top-of-the-line medical/vision/dental insurance. Unlimited PTO with a minimum of 15 days taken per year. [cardless.com/careers]
- **Engineering Focus**: "Ship credit like they ship product" – engineers build consumer-facing financial products using modern APIs and infrastructure. The team includes talent from Uber, Robinhood, Chime, Plaid, and Lyft. [linkedin.com]
- **Growth Trajectory**: Rapidly hiring (+91.7% quarterly job postings) with a young, scaling company that has raised nearly $200M – offering ownership and impact.

## Sources
1. [cardless.com](https://www.cardless.com/)
2. [cardless.com/platform](https://www.cardless.com/platform)
3. [cardless.com/careers](https://www.cardless.com/careers)
4. [linkedin.com/company/cardless](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cardless)
5. [cbinsights.com/company/cardless](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/cardless)

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