VP, Strategy & Analytics, Office of the CEO
About The Position
Kafene is revolutionizing the lease-to-own space. Kafene's lease-to-own platform gives consumers across the credit continuum up to $5,000 in purchasing power, with the ability to cancel anytime, for any reason. With AI and machine learning models that analyze 20,000+ data inputs in real time, we empower retailers across furniture, appliances, electronics, tires, and durable goods to say "yes" to more customers. With over $500 million in sales and counting, we're just getting started. Our 150-person team spans NYC headquarters, Wilmington, and remote talent across the globe—all united by a culture that thrives on collaboration, innovation, and support. That's why BuiltIn named us a Startup to Watch and Forbes recognized us as one of the Best Startup Employers. At a firm like Kafene where every team is data-driven, this is a rare opportunity to be the CEO's analytical right hand: the person who takes a messy, open-ended business question and returns a thoughtful, data-backed answer using queries and analysis you’ve built. The VP of Strategy and Analytics will report to the CEO and provide visibility at his fingertips — the ability to ask a hard question ("why did charge-offs spike last month, and what drove it?") and get a rigorous, multi-step, causal answer quickly in a format that he wants. We are seeking a high-impact, high-visibility individual contributor who can understand and communicate the business problem through analysis — writing queries, building dashboards, and delivering a clear causal narrative the CEO can act on. This role offers exciting opportunities for growth. As the business scales, there is potential to build and lead a team, or become the person who owns portfolio analytics for the company. Either direction puts you at the center of how Kafene makes decisions.
Requirements
- You personally write SQL (or equivalent) and are comfortable doing so every day — this is verified in the interview with a live analytical exercise
- A combination of analytical rigor and clear communication
- Strong working fluency in consumer credit and lending mechanics: vintages, first-payment default, delinquency curves, cash-on-cash, cohort and repeat-customer dynamics; lease-to-own or specialty consumer finance experience is a strong plus
- Excellent judgement and an ability to escalate and flag what you don’t know
- You thrive as a party of one — you want proximity to hard problems, not a team to manage or a function to build
- Likely backgrounds: strategic finance or biz-ops at a lending or fintech company; PE or private credit analyst who codes; data analyst or scientist with consumer lending experience who writes well; ex-consulting followed by a hands-on, data-heavy operating role
Nice To Haves
- lease-to-own or specialty consumer finance experience is a strong plus
Responsibilities
- Take ambiguous questions from the CEO and turn them into structured investigations: define the hypothesis, pull the data yourself, test it, and develop a clear narrative.
- Write your own SQL queries within the company’s data and analytics tools (Sigma and Snowflake); this is a daily, non-negotiable part of the job
- Build and maintain the reporting the CEO needs to see the business clearly: originations, decisioning, funding, delinquency/DPD, early-payoff, cash-on-cash and collection curves, cohort and vintage behavior, repeat vs. new customer performance, merchant and store performance. etc.
- Initially, focus on building a suite of portfolio risk reports (delinquency, charge-off, vintage, and cohort performance) that give the CEO a real-time view of how the book is performing
- Trace anomalies to their root causes — segment by vintage, channel, merchant, score band, and decisioning change until you can explain what moved and why
- Reconcile your numbers against what the functional teams report; when they differ, explain the delta
- Synthesize findings into a clear narrative a busy CEO can act on, backed by data he can trust
Benefits
- We prioritize your well-being by covering 80–90% of medical, dental, and vision insurance costs, including coverage for your spouse, children, and other dependents
- Begin planning for your future from day one with our 401k plan
- We value work-life balance, which is why we offer flexible paid time off starting from your first day of employment
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
