Core Processing Team Lead

Role Description

The Core Processing Team Lead plays a key role in evaluating complex and escalated credit decisions across Navient’s lending products. This role combines deep credit expertise with operational leadership, using data, trends, and performance metrics to strengthen processes and improve decision quality. The Team Lead partners closely with cross‑functional teams—including Risk, Product, Engineering, and Compliance—to drive workflow improvements, implement change, and clearly communicate the operational impact of credit and policy decisions.

How You'll Contribute

• Loan Application Underwriting
  • Independently assessing Application Financial Risk Factors (cash flow, outstanding expenses, transactional banking information).
  • Preparation of loan assessment.
  • Issuing final decisions for approval or decline of applications.
  • Quality control.
• Loan Application Escalation
  • Exercise decision authority for complex credit decisions.
  • Review, decision and deliver feedback on loans for people without decision authority.
  • Manage loan support requests and non-standard process flows.
  • Develop solutions for escalated complaint resolution and error post mortems.
  • Manage teamwide production workflow to achieve team Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Policy and Process Improvements
  • Identify inefficiencies, design solutions, and implement policies or cross-functional improvements to solve root causes.
  • Collaborate with the legal and compliance team to ensure adherence to regulatory requirements.
  • Collaborate with the risk team to develop portfolio strategies for shareholders and clients.
  • Deliver data-driven proposals to leadership.
  • Distill large projects into actionable and documented processes.
• Cross-Functional Projects
  • Deliver against project goals and timelines.
  • Understand and articulate potential impacts on the Credit Ops workflow and origination policy.
  • Initiate change and work with cross-functional teams to implement solutions.
  • Influence change with peers and more senior leadership to help drive results.
• Analytics/Reporting
  • Measures team performance vs. SLAs.
  • Identify key metrics and communicate trends to leadership.
  • Develop key performance indicators.
  • Run ad hoc analyses to investigate issues and support larger initiatives.
• Troubleshooting (systems)
  • Maintain advanced knowledge of end-to-end client experience and internal tools.
  • Identify underlying system issues and provide both data-driven and anecdotal feedback to product/engineering partners.

Qualifications

• Some college. Additional equivalent experience above the required minimum may substitute.
• 3+ years of experience in reviewing consumer credit applications (auto, credit card, student loan, personal loan etc) and fraud detection, remediation, tools and systems.
• 1-2 years of experience working on cross-functional project initiatives.

Nice to Have

• Leadership experience and/or mentoring more junior members of a team.
• Comfort delivering and defending data-backed proposals to senior leadership.
• Familiarity with credit risk factors.
• Experience developing requirements for product and engineering teams.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong collaboration and cross-functional partnership skills.
• Ability to influence and support decision-making across teams.
• Strong written communication skills.
• Strong verbal communication skills.
• Analytical and problem-solving skills.

Benefits

• Paid time off that begins accruing on Day 1, plus My Day and paid company holidays.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for eligible employees and dependents, with access to health advocacy support.
• A 401(k) plan with employer match to support long-term financial security.
• Company-paid basic life insurance and short- and long-term disability coverage.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and wellbeing resources, including digital health and chronic-condition support.
• Family planning resources.
• Pet insurance.
• Learning, development, and career growth opportunities through tuition reimbursement and our e-learning platform.