Senior Associate — Sovereign Risk & Structured Credit

About GSSI

Global South Strategic Intelligence is an independent forensic geopolitical and sovereign-risk advisory firm working with institutional clients on complex sovereign, geopolitical and transaction-risk questions.

Our work sits at the intersection of sovereign risk, institutional finance, political economy, primary-source research and strategic judgement. Assignments are typically discrete, high-value mandates where clients are seeking an independent judgement on a difficult exposure, transaction, jurisdiction or strategic decision.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Associate — Sovereign Risk & Structured Credit to join GSSI in a permanent role, supporting institutional assignments directly alongside the Principal and research team.

This is not primarily a research or geopolitical commentary role. The successful candidate will help take ambiguous institutional problems, identify the relevant sovereign, financial and political-risk variables, challenge underlying assumptions and turn imperfect information into a clear decision framework.

You may work alongside the GSSI Principal and research team on sovereign portfolio reviews, transaction assessments, independent red-team exercises and complex country-risk engagements. You should be comfortable working where the answer is not obvious and where judgement has consequences attached.

What You Will Do

• Analyse sovereign, country, credit and geopolitical risks affecting transactions, portfolios and strategic exposures.
• Review financing structures, transaction documents, financial information, country-risk assumptions and relevant contractual protections.
• Identify hidden dependencies, concentration risks, downside pathways and assumptions that warrant challenge.
• Develop scenarios, stress cases, decision trees and downside analyses.
• Translate political and geopolitical developments into implications for cash flow, creditworthiness, transaction execution, asset recoverability, liquidity, enforceability or investor exposure.
• Challenge consensus assumptions where the evidence warrants it.
• Draft analytical sections and supporting material for institutional deliverables.
• Participate in internal challenge sessions and selected client discussions.
• Maintain a clear distinction between fact, inference, judgement and scenario.

Who We Are Looking For

We are deliberately open about professional background. Relevant experience may include sovereign or country risk, structured credit, emerging-markets banking, political-risk insurance, private credit, project or infrastructure finance, credit underwriting, export credit or development finance, ratings, investment banking, distressed or special-situations investing, transaction advisory, or institutional geopolitical and strategic-risk analysis.

You may currently work in a bank, insurer, investment fund, advisory firm, rating agency, DFI/ECA or specialist intelligence business.

We expect approximately 5–10+ years of relevant professional experience, although quality of judgement matters more than years served.

What Matters to Us

Strong candidates will demonstrate excellent analytical judgement, strong credit and financial intuition, the ability to understand complex transaction structures quickly, comfort with incomplete or conflicting information, intellectual independence, concise institutional writing, discretion and confidence engaging with senior professionals.

A candidate does not need to be a conventional geopolitical-risk specialist. We are particularly interested in people who understand how sovereign and geopolitical developments ultimately transmit into financial, contractual and commercial outcomes.

Experience in emerging or frontier markets, sovereign or quasi-sovereign borrowers, cross-border structured transactions, sanctions, political-risk insurance, commodities, infrastructure, energy, shipping, sovereign distress or local-language research would be valuable but is not essential.

Engagement Structure

This is a permanent full-time role, subject to a six-month probationary period. The Senior Associate will provide continuous senior analytical capacity across GSSI’s institutional mandate pipeline, with the intensity and duration of individual assignments varying according to client requirements.

The role will be predominantly remote/hybrid, with London meetings where useful. Compensation will be agreed based on experience and seniority. The successful candidate will join GSSI’s expanding institutional advisory capacity on a permanent basis, subject to successful completion of probation.