Commercial Real Estate Underwriting Manager

Commercial Real Estate Underwriting Manager

At U.S. Bank, we're on a journey to do our best. Helping the customers and businesses we serve to make better and smarter financial decisions and enabling the communities we support to grow and succeed. We believe it takes all of us to bring our shared ambition to life, and each person is unique in their potential. A career with U.S. Bank gives you a wide, ever-growing range of opportunities to discover what makes you thrive at every stage of your career. Try new things, learn new skills and discover what you excel atall from Day One.

The Commercial Real Estate Underwriting Manager is responsible for leading and developing a team of CRE underwriting professionals while maintaining strong oversight of credit quality, underwriting standards, and workflow execution. The role serves as a key interface between Relationship Management, Credit, and Loan Administration, ensuring credit actions and deliverables are accurate, timely, consistent with policy, and audit-ready.

This position combines hands-on credit leadership with direct people management and core HR responsibilities, supporting team development while ensuring adherence to commercial lending policies, regulatory requirements, and in-office expectations. The team underwrites and supports a broad range of CRE asset classes across the U.S. for regional and local developers and investors.

Key Responsibilities

People Leadership

• Directly manage a team of Commercial Real Estate underwriters, including performance management, coaching, skills development, and quality control.
• Set clear expectations and service-level standards; allocate resources to meet business needs.
• Foster a culture that values accuracy, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.
• Provide initial and ongoing training, feedback, and career development support by identifying learning opportunities aligned with organizational goals. Act as a player-coach to mentor and train staff while ensuring the work gets done at the highest levels.
• Participate in leadership meetings to align priorities, cascade information, and provide updates on capacity, pipeline status, and execution risks.

Workflow Management & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Oversee quality execution of core deliverables, including new transaction underwriting, quarterly portfolio/trend reporting, and annual Sponsor reviews.
• Partner closely with Relationship Management, Credit Risk, Loan Administration, and other internal stakeholders to drive consistent, concise, policy-aligned credit packages.
• Improve processes and controls, inclusive of ad-hoc projects to develop or elevate platform-wide tools and procedures, provide clear updates on key risks, bottlenecks, and prioritization needs.

Credit Oversight, Portfolio Risk & Audit Support

• Maintain the highest credit quality standards within the hub and serve as a senior credit leader in the market.
• Oversee portfolio risk and credit execution, ensuring timely, accurate, and complete credit actions
• Ensure timely completion of credit requests, portfolio monitoring, annual reviews, and problem credit management in line with credit quality goals and policy requirements.
• Serve as one of the key persons of responsibility for audit responses and credit-related inquiries for the hub market(s) and assigned team.

HR Management

• Own core HR responsibilities such as performance reviews, PTO and leave management, and employee development planning.
• Lead the team by adherence to and managing to Bank's 'in-office' work policy.

Client & Revenue Support (as needed)

• As needed based on market and business needs, support client interactions and revenue enhancement efforts in partnership with relationship managers and treasury teams.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree, or equivalent work experience
• Eight or more years of commercial banking/lending experience
• Two or more years of management experience in a commercial credit environment

Preferred Skills & Experience

• 8+ years of commercial real estate lending experience, including hands-on involvement with underwriting, credit approvals, and portfolio management activities.
• 5+ years of direct commercial real estate underwriting experience; strong working knowledge of CRE lending products and structures (e.g., term loans, construction loans, bridge financing, agency executions, participation/syndication fundamentals, covenant frameworks).
• 3+ years of team leadership/management experience, including coaching or overseeing junior staff in a fast-paced execution environment. Absent direct management experience, strong deal management skills and the ability to manage a process are critical.
• Strong leadership presence and a coaching mindset, with a track record of developing talent and promoting consistent execution standards.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills; ability to produce clear, concise credit narratives and executive-ready summaries with appropriate tact and diplomacy.
• Experience improving processes and controls (e.g., templates, checklists, pipeline tracking) and managing credit workflows in a controlled environment, including regulatory compliance and audit support.
• Strong Excel proficiency for underwriting, analysis, and reporting; hands-on experience with systems and data sources such as nCino, CoStar, and LEAP (Microsoft Light Enterprise Application).
• Familiarity with applicable laws, regulations, internal credit, and risk policies and procedures (including fair lending requirements and other requirements relevant to the business).
• Well-developed analytical, decision-making, and problem-solving skills; attention to detail and ability to prioritize competing deliverables under tight timelines.
• Extensive knowledge of commercial lending policy, credit products, and credit quality standards; demonstrated ability to interpret policy, exercise sound judgment, and articulate risk considerations.

Location expectations

This role requires working from one of the U.S. Bank locations listed in the posting three (3) or more days per week. Office locations are Minneapolis, MN, Denver, CO, Brea, CA, and Los Angeles, CA

If there's anything we can do to accommodate a disability during any portion of the application or hiring process, please refer to our disability accommodations for applicants.

Benefits:

Our approach to benefits and total rewards considers our team members' whole selves and what may be needed to thrive in and outside work. That's why our benefits are designed to help you and your family boost your health, protect your financial security and give you peace of mind. Our benefits include the following:

• Healthcare (medical, dental, vision)
• Basic term and optional term life insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Pregnancy disability and parental leave
• 401(k) and employer-funded retirement plan
• Paid vacation (from two to five weeks depending on salary grade and tenure)
• Up to 11 paid holiday opportunities
• Adoption assistance
• Sick and Safe Leave accruals of one hour for every 30 worked, up to 80 hours per calendar year unless otherwise provided by law

U.S. Bank is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or veteran status, and other factors protected under applicable law.