The posting
As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena is committed to a people-first approach. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a flexible work environment that empowers individual growth, well-being, and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.
We are seeking a hands-on Global Senior Credit Manager to establish and lead a risk-focused credit management team based in Gurgaon, India. This role reports to the Treasurer Director, Corporate Finance and Global Credit, based in the U.S.A.
This Global Senior Credit Manager will be responsible for building practical credit policies, assessment and approval processes, and establishing analytical and reporting capabilities to manage the company’s accounts receivable exposure and support disciplined working capital management. This is a builder-and-operator role in a lean environment, partnering closely with Treasury, AR Collections, Invoicing, and Cash Application.
How You Will Contribute:
- Build and lead the credit management function: Recruit, coach, and develop the Gurgaon-based global credit management team, establishing clear roles, performance expectations, and a high-performance culture.
- Design credit policy and governance: Develop and implement global credit policies, country payment-term standards, exception approval workflows, and escalation mechanisms to ensure consistent, disciplined credit decisions.
- Assess creditworthiness and manage credit limits: Build internal risk-rating and capacity methodologies using rating agency tools, financial statements, external ratings, and payment history. Establish and monitor operating credit limits, forecast peak exposure by sales volume and payment terms, manage company-group-level exposures, and escalate excess-capacity approvals.
- Manage terms and mitigate risk: Review and escalate nonstandard payment and invoicing terms; recommend appropriate risk mitigants including advance payments, letters of credit, guarantees, or selective credit insurance.
- Drive collections and manage credit controls: Partner with AR Collections to accelerate collections and develop KPIs to track efficiency and performance. Manage credit-hold and order-release controls with appropriate approval paths; coordinate reviews of high-risk, default, and insolvent accounts and recommend recovery strategies.
- Build reporting capabilities and support loss assessment: Establish dashboards, KPIs, automated monitoring, and standardized workflows to support ongoing credit risk reviews and proactive mitigation. Provide customer-risk assessments for expected credit losses, reserves, and write-offs to Controllership; report portfolio risk, exceptions, concentrations, and realized losses to Treasury.
The Must Haves:
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
- 7+ years of progressive B2B commercial credit, corporate credit risk, or related finance experience.
- Demonstrated experience leading or supervising a credit management or finance operations team.
- Demonstrated experience designing or improving credit policies, underwriting methods, credit risk-rating, credit capacity, credit limits, approval controls, and ongoing portfolio monitoring in a multinational or complex B2B environment.
- Strong financial statement and credit analysis skills; demonstrated understanding of working capital, payment terms, invoicing terms, customer exposure, and order-to-cash processes.
- Demonstrated understanding of credit agency’s (e.g., Moody’s, S&P Global, Dun & Bradstreet) rating methodologies; experience with Moody’s Credit Catalyst or S&P’s RiskGuage rating tool is a plus.
- Sound commercial judgment, independent decision-making, stakeholder influence, and ability to implement practical solutions without a large support team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, work effectively across geographic and functional boundaries, and respond calmly to time-sensitive issues.
- Willingness to work across different time zones; commitment to working availability during morning hours of U.S. Eastern time.
- Professional qualifications such as CBCA, CCRA, CFA, CA, CPA, MBA are a plus.
Assets: The successful candidate will be a hands-on leader who combines strong technical knowledge, effective people skills, and the ability to influence business decisions. The individual should demonstrate ownership, sound judgment and a strong risk mindset while building close partnership across Controllership, Global Business Operations, Global Customer Engagement.
At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard. Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.
Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.
If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.
