Director / VP Head of Merchant Underwriting

ClarityPay•New York City, NY

About The Position

We give businesses and their customers peace of mind by solving complex credit challenges with precision, speed, and intelligence, combining deep expertise with advanced technology, to simplify the experience and deliver better outcomes, every time. We're a fast-growing fintech empowering enterprise merchants with smarter, more adaptive pay-over-time solutions. From point-of-sale financing to “Buy Now, Pay Later” programs and loyalty integrated offers, we’re building configurable credit tools that help businesses serve more of their customers. We value teamwork, clarity of purpose, and rigorous attention to data to drive action. We balance speed and excellence to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Role Overview: As the VP/Director of Merchant Underwriting, you will act as the guardian of ClarityPay’s financial integrity, managing the critical intersection of commercial growth and merchant acquiring risk. In this role, you will define how we assess, onboard, and monitor enterprise merchants, ensuring that our rapid expansion is built on a foundation of prudent credit and fraud risk management. You will be responsible for underwriting merchants specifically for non-delivery, reputational, settlement, chargeback, and dispute exposure. Your primary objective is to mitigate the counterparty risk inherent in our business model—specifically the risk of unrecoverable funds due to merchant insolvency or operational failure. This is a highly quantitative and strategic role; you will leverage advanced financial and statistical modeling to quantify risks and devise creative mitigation strategies—such as holdbacks, delayed settlements, or covenants—that allow us to say "yes" to business while protecting our downside. You will work cross-functionally with Commercial, Legal, and Credit leadership to structure deals that balance commercial success with rigorous risk control.

Requirements

7-10+ years of experience in Merchant Underwriting, Commercial Credit Risk, and/or Counterparty Risk Management, preferably within the Payments, Acquiring, or Lending space.
You are hands-on with data. You have proficiency in SQL for data extraction and querying, and experience using Python for statistical risk modeling and financial analysis. You don't just consume reports; you build the tools to analyze them.
You are comfortable tearing apart financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow) to assess liquidity and solvency. You can identify red flags in a merchant’s books that others might miss.
Proven experience in creating and enforcing covenants, collateral requirements, and risk mitigation solutions. You understand the legal and financial levers available to protect a creditor.
You have a track record of balancing risk vs. reward. You can explain complex risk concepts to Sales leaders and merchants in a way that is collaborative rather than obstructive.
Exceptional ability to lead nuanced conversations with senior stakeholders (internal and external). You can hold your ground on risk decisions while maintaining strong professional relationships.
You have experience building teams or frameworks from the ground up and are comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

Nice To Haves

You have experience leveraging Generative AI tools to scale analysis.
You are skilled in prompt engineering and know how to utilize LLMs to rapidly extract key insights from large volumes of unstructured documents (financial reports, contracts, earnings calls) to accelerate decision-making.

Responsibilities

Merchant Acquiring & Counterparty Risk Strategy: Own the underwriting framework for merchant acquiring risk. You will design policies to assess a merchant’s financial health and stability, ensuring we are protected against chargebacks and disputes in scenarios where a merchant may go out of business or become insolvent. This includes due diligence as it relates to CFPB and AG related actions.
Deal Structuring & Risk Mitigation: Move beyond binary approvals/declines to engineer solutions. You will devise industry-leading practices to mitigate identified risks, creating and enforcing specific covenants, holdback structures, and delayed settlement schedules that align with our risk appetite.
Due Diligence & Investigation: Lead the engagement with merchant teams to verify financial data, validate business claims, and quantify operational risks. You will drive the due diligence process to uncover hidden liabilities before they become ClarityPay’s problem.
Financial & Statistical Modeling: Utilize extensive data analytics and financial modeling to forecast potential loss scenarios. You will build the models that quantify our exposure and determine the appropriate credit limits and monitoring triggers for each partner.
Cross-Functional Deal Leadership: Play a central role in deal teams, working closely with Commercial, Legal, and Credit Risk leadership. You will lead nuanced, high-stakes conversations to align stakeholders, ensuring we support commercial targets without compromising our risk principles.
Portfolio Monitoring: Devise and implement ongoing monitoring mechanisms. You will track merchant health post-onboarding to identify deteriorating trends early and trigger proactive risk mitigation measures.
Team Building: Build and mentor a high-performing underwriting team capable of scaling with the business. You will foster a culture of deep analytical rigor and commercial awareness.