Associate Director North America Regulated Utilities

About the Role

Grade Level (for internal use): 12

The Team: Credit Ratings is an integral part of the Global Ratings Services team, comprising a diverse group of 1,400 analysts spread across key financial hubs worldwide. We are dedicated to delivering high‑quality insights and exceptional client service across all industry sectors.

The Impact: At S&P Global, our values—Discovery, Integrity, and Partnership—shape how we work, collaborate, and earn trust with our customers and each other. We embrace AI as an enabler, guided by rigorous governance and risk management, to enhance what has always defined us: the intelligence of our people, deep relationships, and trusted insights.

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/rollout with governance, controls, and change management.

• Foster a critical thinking mindset challenging assumptions and the status quo 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.

Core Analytical & Delivery

• Deliver end‑to‑end analytical execution across a defined portfolio, setting 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/drafting.

• Operate effectively alongside AI agents in recurring workflows.

• Support the execution of AI‑driven projects.

• Validate inputs, reconcile metrics, 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, differentiates S&P’s market viewpoint, and drives engagement with market participants.

• Contribute to strategic initiatives and also thought leadership by researching, drafting, and refining content with senior team input.

Risk Management and Operating

• Ensure adherence to methodology/confidentiality/data governance requirements; elevate emerging risks early.

• Embed responsible AI use in workflow process.

• 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.

Strong energy or infrastructure background with deep understanding of credit analysis gained in transactional, analytical, or credit roles.

Willingness to rapidly pivot into different sectors to meet client needs and analytical needs across the practice.

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,…