Quants in Credit Risk Analysis/Modeling

[echostate]

Usually when I google job posts, there are some junior quant positions related to "credit risk analysis", where the main function is to develop statistical models for credit ratings. This can be fun, just as developing statistical models to predict users' ratings on movies/products/advertisements ...

However, such a role seems to be completely irrelevant to quant traders (those developing quantitative trading strategies) or quant asset management (those working on quantitative portfolio optimization) or sell-side quants (those assisting traders for decision making).

What is the career prospect of those credit risk analysts? Especially considering the fact that they are kind of irrelevant to quant traders / portfolio management, what is the high-level end of a credit analysis quant?

Thanks!