Senior Director- Latin America Structure Finance

Fitch Ratings is currently recruiting a highly skilled and motivated individual to join our growing and dynamic Latin American Structured Finance Group as a senior credit analyst (senior Director Level). Based in Chicago, the position involves management of a small team, working with other members of the Latam SF team on all aspects of the rating process, including responsibility for a portfolio of issuances. The person will also act as Sector Head for the Latin American ABS market.

The candidate must be able to demonstrate analytical excellence and excellent communication skills in front of internal and external audiences. Moreover, they must demonstrate an ability to represent Fitch Ratings in a highly professional manner to issuers and global investors. They will be required to lead meetings with senior management teams and to explain our credit rating opinions. Strong organizational and presentation skills are also required to implement, manage and continually improve the teams analytical and industry expertise and related governance.

The successful candidate will have an established track record in credit analysis and will be proficient at doing research and drafting issuer and sector wide analysis, with strong communication and presentation skills.

As a senior credit analyst within the Latin American Structured Finance team the candidate must:

• Provide analytical leadership and external focus for the team.

• Develop cross region research and commentary.

• Actively chair and vote on the team's credits, particularly for complex and high profile issuers.

• Directly perform, and support other analysts through the credit analysis of different transactions, by demonstrating the ability to understand and identify key factors that affect issue and issuer credit ratings, through the application of the relevant ratings criteria.

• Maintain integrity of analytical or compliance related databases as appropriate.

• Lead and contribute to criteria development and implementation

• Effectively lead special projects/tasks (criteria, regulatory, analytical, education, planning etc.)

• Responsible to develop key sector data for use in an analytical process

• Acts as senior analytical spokesperson for the team, communicating Fitch's analytical thought leadership, credit themes, and new criteria via publications, speeches, conference presentations, and media interviews

• Support other analysts during challenging interactions with issuers

• Attend management meetings across sectors, generally for complex and high profile issuers

• Meet with investors and intermediaries to provide analytical education and gather feedback

• Shares/transfers knowledge and skills, and mentors junior team members to develop them

• Support other ad-hoc analytical and process improvement efforts as required

Position requirements:

• Deep analytical skills and capital markets knowledge; asset backed securities interests and experience a strong plus.

• Must have an MBA or CFA with a minimum of 10 years in the financial services industry.

• 10+ years of demonstrable experience with a large commercial bank, investment bank, investing institution, or other credit institutions, working in the field of credit analysis.

• Strong track record of analytical leadership and expertise.

• Solid organizational management skills.

• Detail orientated with the ability to maintain accuracy whilst complying with deadlines.

• Highly proficient at working with financial models.

• The ability to work both independently and within a team environment is critical.

• Willing to travel, sometimes at short notice.

• Solid computer literate having strong Excel/Word/PowerPoint and database application skills. Ability to prepare forecasts based upon reasoned assumptions will be required.

• Possess excellent communication skills, verbal and written in English and Spanish. Portuguese is a plus