Manager - Residential Mortgage Underwriting at SAIGroup

<p></p> <h1>Manager – Residential Mortgage Underwriting</h1> <h3>Role Overview</h3> <p>As a <strong>Manager – Residential Mortgage Underwriting</strong> at <strong>JazzX AI</strong>, you will lead a team of residential mortgage underwriting consultants responsible for translating real-world underwriting expertise into scalable, AI-powered mortgage underwriting solutions.</p> <p>You will be responsible for <strong>team management, underwriting quality, process governance, and domain leadership</strong>, while partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and AI teams to ensure underwriting logic, risk assessment, and decisioning accurately reflect industry standards and GSE guidelines.</p> <p>The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on experience in residential mortgage underwriting, proven people-management capabilities, and the ability to translate complex underwriting decisions into structured rules, workflows, and actionable feedback for technology teams.</p> <hr> <h2>Key Responsibilities</h2> <h3>1. Team Leadership &amp; People Management</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Lead, mentor, and manage a team of residential mortgage underwriting consultants.</p> </li> <li> <p>Allocate underwriting assignments and ensure timely completion of deliverables.</p> </li> <li> <p>Review team performance, productivity, quality, and adherence to underwriting standards.</p> </li> <li> <p>Conduct regular 1:1s, provide coaching and feedback, and support professional development.</p> </li> <li> <p>Build a culture of accountability, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.</p> </li> <li> <p>Identify skill gaps and drive training and upskilling initiatives for the underwriting team.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>2. Underwriting Quality &amp; Governance</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Oversee underwriting of residential mortgage loan files, including <strong>purchase, rate-term refinance, and cash-out refinance</strong> transactions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ensure underwriting decisions align with <strong>Fannie Mae DU and Freddie Mac LP guidelines</strong>, investor requirements, and applicable lending policies.</p> </li> <li> <p>Review complex, high-risk, and exception files and provide guidance to the team on appropriate decisions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Establish quality standards and conduct periodic reviews/audits of underwriting decisions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Identify recurring errors, risk patterns, and process gaps and implement corrective actions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ensure consistency and accuracy in underwriting decisions across the team.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>3. Process Mapping &amp; Underwriting Rule Development</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Lead the team in deconstructing end-to-end mortgage underwriting workflows.</p> </li> <li> <p>Translate underwriting policies and guidelines into clear decision points, rules, and workflows.</p> </li> <li> <p>Identify critical underwriting scenarios, exceptions, edge cases, and compensating factors.</p> </li> <li> <p>Partner with Product and Engineering teams to convert underwriting expertise into AI-enabled decisioning logic.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ensure business rules and underwriting workflows remain aligned with evolving GSE and industry requirements.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>4. AI Model Validation &amp; Product Collaboration</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Lead the validation of AI-generated underwriting recommendations against expert manual underwriting decisions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Establish structured review frameworks and quality benchmarks for AI outputs.</p> </li> <li> <p>Analyze discrepancies between AI recommendations and human underwriting decisions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Provide actionable feedback to Product, Data Science, and Engineering teams to improve models, rules, and confidence thresholds.</p> </li> <li> <p>Prioritize underwriting scenarios based on risk, business impact, and frequency.</p> </li> <li> <p>Act as the primary <strong>mortgage underwriting SME</strong> for technology and product teams.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>5. Knowledge Management &amp; Training</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Develop and maintain underwriting playbooks, SOPs, decision trees, and knowledge repositories.</p> </li> <li> <p>Lead training sessions and workshops on complex underwriting topics.</p> </li> <li> <p>Coach underwriters on areas such as income analysis, asset verification, credit assessment, collateral, AUS findings, exceptions, and GSE compliance.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ensure consistent interpretation and application of underwriting guidelines across the team.</p> </li> <li> <p>Stay current with changes to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, investor, and industry guidelines and communicate relevant updates to the team.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>6. Stakeholder Management</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Serve as the key underwriting point of contact for Product, Engineering, AI/ML, and Operations teams.</p> </li> <li> <p>Communicate underwriting risks, trends, challenges, and recommendations to senior stakeholders.</p> </li> <li> <p>Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define requirements and acceptance criteria for underwriting-related products and features.</p> </li> <li> <p>Manage escalations and provide expert guidance on complex underwriting scenarios.</p> </li> <li> <p>Represent the underwriting function in product reviews, calibration sessions, and business discussions.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>7. Continuous Improvement</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Identify opportunities to improve underwriting efficiency, accuracy, and consistency through automation and process optimization.</p> </li> <li> <p>Analyze team and underwriting performance metrics to identify improvement opportunities.</p> </li> <li> <p>Drive standardization of underwriting processes and decision-making.</p> </li> <li> <p>Support initiatives aimed at reducing manual effort while maintaining underwriting quality and risk controls.</p> </li> </ul> <hr> <h1>Required Qualifications</h1> <h3>Experience</h3> <ul> <li> <p><strong>12–15 years of experience</strong> in residential mortgage underwriting, preferably with <strong>3+ years in a team-lead/managerial or underwriting SME capacity</strong>.</p> </li> <li> <p>Strong experience managing or mentoring a team of mortgage underwriters.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hands-on experience with <strong>purchase, rate-term refinance, and cash-out refinance</strong> transactions.</p> </li> <li> <p>Experience handling complex underwriting scenarios and escalations.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>GSE &amp; Underwriting Expertise</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Deep working knowledge of <strong>Fannie Mae DU and/or Freddie Mac LP</strong> guidelines.</p> </li> <li> <p>Strong understanding of:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Borrower credit assessment</p> </li> <li> <p>Income calculation and analysis</p> </li> <li> <p>Asset verification</p> </li> <li> <p>Employment verification</p> </li> <li> <p>Property/collateral assessment</p> </li> <li> <p>DTI/LTV/CLTV</p> </li> <li> <p>AUS findings</p> </li> <li> <p>Manual underwriting</p> </li> <li> <p>AUS overrides</p> </li> <li> <p>Compensating factors</p> </li> <li> <p>Underwriting exceptions</p> </li> <li> <p>GSE compliance</p> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h3>Leadership</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Proven ability to manage, coach, and develop underwriting teams.</p> </li> <li> <p>Strong quality-control mindset with the ability to establish and maintain underwriting standards.</p> </li> <li> <p>Demonstrated experience handling escalations and complex underwriting decisions.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>Analytical &amp; Communication Skills</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.</p> </li> <li> <p>Excellent written and verbal communication skills.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ability to clearly articulate complex underwriting decisions and convert them into structured rules and workflows.</p> </li> <li> <p>Comfortable working with technical and non-technical stakeholders.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>Technology &amp; AI Collaboration</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Experience working with <strong>mortgage technology, automation, decision engines, or AI/ML initiatives</strong> is highly desirable.</p> </li> <li> <p>Ability to translate domain expertise into business rules, workflows, decision trees, and test cases.</p> </li> <li> <p>Comfortable reviewing and challenging technology-generated recommendations based on underwriting expertise.</p> </li> </ul> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p>