Associate Director - Structured Finance Ratings, Esoteric Assets, New York, Denver, or Toronto

About the role

Grade Level (for internal use): 12. The Credit Ratings team is an integral part of the Global Ratings Services organization, comprising a diverse group of 1,400 analysts across key financial hubs worldwide. The Esoteric ABS team assigns credit ratings to securities backed by non‑traditional collateral such as corporate securitizations, data centres, triple‑net leases, transportation assets, De‑Fi, etc., by analysing underlying asset performance, structural protections, cash‑flow mechanics, and downside stress scenarios. Analysts produce opinions that help issuers and investors compare complex instruments, offering market‑relevant perspectives on performance trends, issuance conditions, and AI’s role in origination and securitisation.

Benefits

Joining S&P Global means becoming part of a diverse community where growth and well‑being are prioritised, alongside 35,000+ colleagues. The environment values inclusion, collaboration, and authentic engagement, celebrates achievements, and provides continuous learning through education, training, and career coaching. Employees can connect through People Resource Groups that foster awareness, engagement, and community both within S&P Global and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Team Contribution & Capability Building: Act as senior reference point coaching research assistants, rating analysts and senior analysts on credit fundamentals, modelling discipline, data quality, and standard work, including how to use AI as an enabler with governance. Coordinate work across credits; anticipate capacity/quality risks; influence outcomes through planning and constructive challenge in ambiguous situations. Embed continuous improvement into routines by improving 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 that challenges assumptions and the status quo to generate insights that shape market views and strategic decisions. Model enterprise behaviours—Discovery, Integrity, and Partnership—including human‑centric leadership alongside AI‑enabled change.
• Core Analytical & Delivery: Deliver end‑to‑end analytical execution across a defined portfolio, maintaining a consistently high bar for quality, timeliness and clarity to sustain customer trust. 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, validate inputs, reconcile metrics and document assumptions/model changes.
• Stakeholder & Market Engagement: Synthesize data, analysis and research into executive‑ready, market‑facing narratives that convey S&P’s analytical expertise—leveraging broad market knowledge and detailed analysis to deliver trusted advice that influences decisions. 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 with senior team input.
• Risk Management and Operating: 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 and controls while partnering with Data/Engineering to scale safely, and set expectations for ongoing monitoring and human oversight.

Compensation

U.S. candidates: Anticipated base salary range $110,000 USD to $193,000 USD. Final base salary will be based on geographic location, experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications. The role is eligible for an annual incentive plan.

Canadian candidates: Anticipated compensation range CAD 110,000 to CAD 172,000. Final compensation will be based on performance, geographic location, experience level, skill set, training, licenses and certifications. This posting complies with Ontario’s new regulations effective January 1 2026.

Qualifications

• Complete the end‑to‑end ratings process for new‑issue and surveillance transactions across non‑traditional assets such as transportation ABS, private equity, triple‑NNN, data centres, time‑share, whole business and De‑Fi.
• Perform cash‑flow analysis, synthesize results and present findings in committees.
• Analyse credit, cash‑flow and performance characteristics of collateral pools; review third‑party model output and reconcile with internal models.
• Review legal and operating documents for consistency with