Director of Portfolio Risk & Strategy
30 Oct 2025
United States
About the job
About Tala
At Tala, we’re applying advanced technology and human creativity to solve what legacy institutions can’t or won't. We are a global financial infrastructure company on a mission to unleash the economic power of the global majority, recognizing that today’s financial infrastructure doesn’t work for most of the world’s population.
We’re the first and only platform to combine the intelligence of a credit bureau, the payments execution of a fintech, and the relationship expertise of a bank into one vertically integrated solution. Our platform is powered by an expansive moat of proprietary data and AI/ML decisioning technology, enabling us to deliver instant, reliable liquidity personalized to every customer's needs. Through our flagship credit app, we’ve disbursed over $7 billion in credit to more than 12 million customers across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. These customers have leveraged Tala products to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals.
Our pioneering work and proven impact have earned us consistent recognition, including being named to:
CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for five years.
CNBC’s World's Top Fintech Companies for two consecutive years.
Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for nine consecutive years.
Visionary investors, persuaded by the economic power of the global majority, have committed half a billion dollars in equity and debt to Tala's success.
Given the global nature of our team, we operate on a remote-first approach with office hubs in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.
Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!
The Role
We are seeking an experienced, impact-oriented leader to fill our Sr. Director of Portfolio Risk & Strategy at Tala. The candidate will report to the SVP of Risk and will be the key leader in providing enterprise-level portfolio diagnostics, foresight, and frameworks necessary to ensure sustainable, resilient growth across lending products in 8+ international markets via effective risk management and Product roadmap influence..
The ideal candidate will be a strategic thinker with a strong analytics skillset and deep consumer lending experience, who can collaborate across functions and geographies. They will have demonstrated an ability to define and build scalable policies and systems that enable efficient underwriting and product decisions with sound governance leading to resilient growth.
What You'll Do
- Enterprise Governance & Policy
- Defines and maintains Board and externally-read risk appetite frameworks that translate growth goals into clear quantifiable limits for the entire lending business for Tala’s growing number of international markets
- Defines, evolves, and implements within Product squads the overarching credit policies that govern all of Tala’s lending activities
- Innovates on existing policies and valuation frameworks as needed driven by evolution in Tala’s products and decisioning capabilities
- Leads Credit Risk Committee meetings, owning the agenda, content, and executive level synthesis, ensuring strategic and risk appetite alignment and data-driven discussion amongst senior leaders
- Strategic Portfolio Diagnostics & Foresight
- Designs and implements continuous credit performance monitoring that assesses loan quality, customer behavior, and segment-level health
- Anticipates macroeconomic and competitive trends, providing clear syntheses on risks to the portfolio and recommended strategy changes for each international markets
- Owns risk diagnostic assessments of our lending strategies and decisioning to surface key areas of strengths and opportunities for improvement for placement on product roadmap
- Risk-Adjusted Growth & Opportunity
- Identifies growth opportunities via segments of both new or existing customers by providing data-informed, risk-adjusted insights.
- Partner with Product and Data Science to enable efficient, growth-oriented decisioning innovation while ensuring disciplined adherence to company-level risk appetite and policies.
- Executive & Cross-Functional Enablement
- Provides concise, executive-level syntheses on risk performance and expectations to the CEO, Board, Finance and Capital Markets team, ensuring we have external-ready portfolio narratives and portfolio governance structures
- Leads Credit Risk Committee meetings, owning the agenda, content, and executive-level synthesis, ensuring strategic and risk appetite alignment and data-driven discussion amongst senior leaders.
What You'll Need
- 10+ years experience in unsecured consumer lending with a nuanced understanding of how credit dynamics interact across the customer lifecycle in a high-volume, international context. Possess familiarity of foundational consumer behavior and macroeconomic principles
- Proven track record of developing and implementing successful decisioning, analytical and valuation frameworks in a systemic and scalable manner
- Experience in creating sound governance structures and rhythms and influencing partner teams on their criticality, obtaining organizational buy-in
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to apply advanced analytical techniques (e.g. multivariate linear regression, vintage analysis, residual analysis, lifecycle modeling) across diverse datasets to diagnose portfolio performance and actionable insights. Seeks precision of data to support claims, yet is comfortable exercising judgment where data is lacking
- Proactive and inquisitive approach to identifying and surfacing emerging risks and opportunities
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and build consensus across different levels and functions
- A leadership style rooted in integrity, truth-seeking, and operational excellence
- A curiosity that will enable you to digest the Tala’s customer, business, and operating model quickly
- Proficiency in SQL and Python
- Bachelor’s degree in a finance, engineering, statistics, or other related discipline
- Comfort working and effectively communicating in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a global team
Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
