Credit Risk Manager

About Pagaya

Shape the Future of Finance
Pagaya is building a leading artificial intelligence network to help our partners grow their businesses and better serve their customers.
Pagaya is a global technology company making life-changing financial products and services available to more people nationwide, as it reshapes the financial services ecosystem. By using machine learning, a vast data network and a sophisticated AI-driven approach, Pagaya provides comprehensive consumer credit and residential real estate solutions for its partners, their customers, and investors. Its proprietary API and capital solutions integrate into its network of partners to deliver seamless user experiences and greater access to the mainstream economy. Pagaya has offices in New York and Tel Aviv. For more information, visit pagaya.com.

Let's create better outcomes together!

About the Role

The Credit Risk Manager serves as the senior credit and execution authority for all auto lending partners, acting as the real-time risk, product, and operational bridge between each partner and Pagaya. This role is critical to delivering a best-in-class dealer experience by enabling fast, informed credit and funding decisions while protecting portfolio performance.

This individual holds defined lending and funding authority to approve exceptions, waivers, and deal adjustments without reliance on centralized queues, ensuring speed to decision in high-volume environments. The role owns deal-level credit execution, exception governance, and funding resolution, while continuously feeding performance insights back to Pagaya’s product, risk, and engineering teams to improve product-market fit and scalability. 

This is a highly visible, hands-on role central to the success and long-term performance of the Pagaya–Ally auto partnership.

Key Responsibilities

Credit & Lending Authority

• Exercise delegated lending authority to approve credit exceptions, including LTV deviations, PTI buffers, pricing adjustments, rate concessions, and stipulation waivers within defined limits
• Provide real-time direction on deal restructuring required to generate approvals or improved pricing
• Track and evaluate the performance of loans approved with exceptions or waivers to validate risk outcomes and inform future credit policy

Funding Authority & Deal Resolution

• Extend credit authority into funding decision-making, including resolution of aged held offerings and minor funding issues
• Approve funding-related waivers (e.g., customer interviews, minor documentation gaps) when supported by borrower strength and deal structure

Pre-Stip Validation & Stipulation Governance

• Provide firm, upfront validation or clearance of stipulations prior to funding to reduce downstream friction
• Help design and manage the intake process for pre-stip validation (portal, workflow, or inbox), ensuring clarity for dealers and Ally teams

Product Development & Risk Intelligence

• Act as the primary feedback conduit between each partners underwriting, field teams, dealers, and Pagaya HQ
• Conduct win/loss and lost-deal analysis to identify take-rate opportunities, friction points, and competitive gaps
• Translate frontline insights into actionable recommendations for credit policy, approval logic, pricing, and operational workflows utilizing AI tools for consistency and repeatability
• Monitor early performance indicators including first-payment default, fraud trends, and exception outcomes
• Provide market level intelligence utilizing JD Power PIN and similar marketplace driver reporting tools

Exception & Operational Management

• Own day-to-day exception workflows and deal-level issue resolution
  Review daily AT files to identify failed loans, confirm prior approvals, and investigate unexpected declines
• Resolve escalated credit and operational issues directly with each partners stakeholders

Enablement & Stakeholder Engagement

• Deliver on-floor coaching, ad-hoc support, and formal training for partner staff
• Educate teams on best practices for exception submissions, stip management, and deal structuring
• Create a continuous feedback loop between partner operations and Pagaya’s product, risk, and technology teams

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in auto finance credit, underwriting, risk management, or funding operations
• Direct experience working with auto dealers and indirect lending platforms
• Demonstrated credit and funding authority in a high-volume lending environment
• Deep understanding of auto credit structures, exceptions, stipulations, pricing, and funding workflows
• Strong ability to interpret automated credit decisions and explain outcomes clearly to stakeholders
• Proven track record of balancing credit risk with dealer experience and operational efficiency
• Exceptional problem-solving skills with the ability to identify root causes across credit, data, and systems
• Strong communication skills and comfort managing escalated, high-impact conversations
• Data analytic skills highly preferred, including AI focused integration and market data platform experience
• Highly organized and able to manage multiple priorities in real time
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with product, risk, operations, and engineering team

Our Team

Pagaya was founded in 2016 by seasoned research, finance, and technology entrepreneurs with our head quarters located in NYC and Tel Aviv. 

We move fast and smart, identifying new opportunities and building end-to-end solutions from AI models and unique data sources. Every Pagaya team member is solving new and exciting challenges every day in a culture based on partnership, collaboration, and community.

Join a team of builders who are working every day to enable better outcomes for our partners and their customers.

Our Values

• Continuously Learn- We challenge ourselves for the sake of getting better as individuals, as teams, and as an organization to deliver for our partners.
• Debate and Commit- We respectfully and openly debate to strengthen our ideas and build shared conviction - once we decide, we go all in, together.
• Dream Big and Act- We boldly tackle complex problems, pressure-test solutions in real-time, and adapt with speed and energy.
• Advance Inclusion- We create a world where everyone can win, designing systems that better represent people and generate sustainable value for our employees, partners and investors.
• Be Accountable Together- We proudly own our actions and our results, taking initiative to ensure our work gets over the finish line as a team.

More than just a job

We believe health, happiness, and productivity go hand-in-hand. That's why we're continually looking to enhance the ways we support you with benefits programs and perks that allow every Pagayan to do the best work of their life.