Your role
The Competitive Underwriter is responsible for pricing, structuring, and executing municipal bond transactions in competitive sale processes. This role partners closely with sales and trading to evaluate deals, develop bid strategies, and manage risk to maximize win rates and profitability.
Key Responsibilities
Deal Evaluation & Pricing
• Analyze municipal bond announcements for competitive bids
• Build pricing scales, yield curves, and relative value assessments
• Evaluate credit fundamentals, structure, call features, and investor demand
• Determine optimal bid levels balancing risk, return, and win probability
Market Strategy & Execution
• Develop and execute bidding strategies for competitive transactions
• Monitor market conditions (rates, flows, supply/demand, comparable trades)
• Coordinate with trading desk on secondary levels and positioning
• Submit bids and manage award process in real time
Risk Management
• Assess market and inventory risk associated with awarded deals
• Work with trading to hedge or distribute risk efficiently
• Ensure adherence to firm risk limits and capital usage guidelines
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partner with:
• Sales: gauge investor demand and pricing appetite
• Trading: align on secondary levels and liquidity
• Provide feedback to improve competitiveness
Post-Award Execution
• Support allocation, distribution, and secondary market trading strategies
• Monitor performance of won deals and refine future pricing approaches
• Maintain records of bids, outcomes, and competitor behavior
Your expertise
• ideally 3-10+ years in municipal underwriting, trading, or syndicate
• Strong familiarity with competitive sale processes (BidComp, IPREO, etc)
Deep understanding of:
• Municipal bond structures and credit analysis
• Yield curves, spread relationships, and relative value
• Pricing tools
• Strong Excel / modeling capabilities
• Excellent analytical and decision-making skills under time pressure
• Strong market intuition and pricing judgment
• High attention to detail and execution discipline
• Ability to collaborate across sales and trading
• Experience bidding high volume competitive deals
• Relationships with municipal market participants
• Knowledge of derivatives / hedging strategies (plus)
Salary information
The indicative gross base salary range as a full-time equivalent role:
• United States - New York - New York min USD 250000 - max USD 275000 /annum
The expected salary for this role will be determined by relevant factors which may include but are not limited to, role-required experience, qualifications, education, location and skill level. UBS offers a range of competitive benefits and for further information, please visit ubs.com/employee-benefits. We may, at our sole discretion, provide additional variable compensation or awards.
