Associate Director - Structured Finance Ratings, Esoteric Assets

S&P Global • Toronto, ON

3d • $110,000 - $193,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Structured Finance Esoteric ABS Credit Ratings team is a vital part of the Global Ratings Services, with 1,400 analysts worldwide. This team specializes in rating securities backed by non-traditional collateral such as corporate securitizations, data centers, triple-net leases, transportation assets, and De-Fi. They analyze asset performance, structural protections, cash-flow mechanics, and stress scenarios to provide opinions that aid issuers and investors in comparing complex instruments. The team also offers market-relevant perspectives on performance trends, issuance conditions, and the role of AI in origination and securitization. S&P Global's values of Discovery, Integrity, and Partnership guide their work, with a focus on leveraging AI as an enabler under rigorous governance to enhance human intelligence and deliver trusted insights.

Requirements

• Complete the end-to-end ratings process for new issue and surveillance transactions.
• Perform cash flow analysis, synthesize results, and present findings in committees for various non-traditional assets.
• Analyze credit, cash flow, and performance characteristics of collateral pools.
• Review third-party model output and reconcile with cash flow results from internal models.
• Review legal and operating documents to ensure consistency with criteria and identify issues with the transaction structure.
• Provide comments to external parties.
• Actively manage relationships with internal and external clients.
• Demonstrate strong knowledge of ratings criteria and cash flow analysis and be able to handle clients’ analytical questions.
• Actively contribute to training and outreach efforts, including commentaries, podcasts, and webinars.
• Execution maturity across credit portfolio; delivers high quality with limited oversight.
• Strong collaboration/communication; influences through credibility and constructive challenge.
• Proven coaching/mentorship; develops juniors through feedback and quality review and reinforces human accountability in AI-enabled work.
• Continuous improvement mindset with evidence of simplifying processes through standardization, tooling, and automation.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and change, adapting quickly as processes/tools evolve.
• Ability to scale automation/agent workflows by defining problems, supporting testing/UAT, identifying controls, and enabling adoption.
• Strong research/data/credit/financial analysis; translates complexity into decision-useful narratives grounded in evidence and judgement.
• Strong understanding of the financial services environment and ability to connect developments to emerging risk themes.
• Practical AI fluency: experience embedding GenAI/LLMs and agentic workflows to increase productivity/insight as an enabler of human expertise, paired with disciplined validation, governance, and judgement.
• Strong analytical tool capability; willingness to learn data/automation tools to oversee AI-enabled production.
• Effective written and verbal skills for committee-ready documentation/presentation and interactions with issuers, investors and market participants.
• High standards for accuracy, traceability, and governance; consistent adherence to methodology/documentation/confidentiality expectations.
• Sound judgement on responsible AI/automation (validation, bias/hallucination awareness, data protection, attribution, approved boundaries).
• Five to ten years’ of relevant work experience.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent required.
• Employees are required to work from the office a minimum of two days per week.
• Candidates who reach the final stage of the interview process will be asked to attend at least one in-person interview at their nearest S&P Global Ratings office before an offer can be extended.

Nice To Haves

• A master’s degree or professional certification (such as CFA) is highly valued.
• We welcome candidates from traditional finance disciplines as well as diverse academic backgrounds that support innovative and critical thinking.

Responsibilities

• Act as a senior reference point coaching junior staff on credit fundamentals, modeling, data quality, and standard work, including the use of AI as an enabler with governance.
• Coordinate work across credits, anticipate capacity/quality risks, and influence outcomes through planning and constructive challenge.
• Embed continuous improvement by enhancing playbooks/SOPs/prompt libraries and driving adoption.
• Partner with stakeholders to identify and shape high-impact use cases, supporting testing, adoption, and rollout with governance, controls, and change management.
• Foster a critical thinking mindset to generate insights that shape market views and strategic decisions.
• Model enterprise behaviors: Discovery, Integrity, and Partnership, including human-centric leadership alongside AI-enabled change.
• Deliver end-to-end analytical execution across a defined portfolio, ensuring high quality, timeliness, and clarity.
• Lead surveillance and analytical updates, connecting performance, market developments, and issuer peers to forward-looking risk themes.
• Own the quality of key outputs, ensuring consistency and clarity of reasoning.
• Use approved GenAI/LLMs to accelerate research, comparisons, and drafting.
• Operate effectively alongside AI agents in recurring workflows.
• Support the execution of AI-driven projects, validating inputs, reconciling metrics, and documenting assumptions/model changes.
• Synthesize data, analysis, and research into executive-ready, market-facing narratives.
• Build collaborative stakeholder trust through empathetic communication, differentiate S&P’s market viewpoint, and drive engagement with market participants.
• Contribute to strategic initiatives and thought leadership by researching, drafting, and refining content.
• Ensure adherence to methodology, confidentiality, and data governance requirements; escalate emerging risks early.
• Embed responsible AI use in workflow processes.
• Drive controlled automation/agentic workflows to remove low-leverage work, defining requirements/controls and partnering with Data/Engineering to scale safely while setting expectations for ongoing monitoring and human oversight.

Benefits

• Health care coverage designed for the mind and body.
• Generous time off helps keep you energized for your time on.
• Access a wealth of resources to grow your career and learn valuable new skills.
• Competitive pay, retirement planning, a continuing education program with a company-matched student loan contribution, and financial wellness programs.
• Perks for your partners and little ones, too, with some best-in class benefits for families.
• Retail discounts to referral incentive awards.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level