Description

This role is the connective tissue of the DLP program. You will take a roadmap that spans multiple engineering teams, client commitments, and third-party integrations, and turn it into a sequenced, resourced, executable plan - then drive it to release. You will run the cadence, manage the dependencies, surface the risks early, and keep leadership and client stakeholders honestly informed about what is on track and what is not.

You will also partner closely with Product on what gets built. You will help shape and refine the roadmap, pressure-test scope against capacity and dependencies, and author or co-author requirements. Product ownership is shared; delivery accountability is yours.

Mortgage lending domain knowledge is central to this role. You should already understand the loan lifecycle, what a loan officer and an underwriter actually do all day, and why an integration failure on a pricing or credit vendor is a production emergency.

Key Responsibilities

Program & Delivery Leadership
• Own end-to-end delivery for assigned DLP programs, from intake through release and post-launch validation.
• Coordinate work spanning engineering teams, work streams, and release cycles; sequence delivery so that dependencies resolve in the right order.
• Build and maintain integrated program plans that identify critical path, cross-team dependencies, resource needs, and hard external dates.
• Drive the delivery cadence - backlog refinement, sprint planning, cross-team syncs, release readiness reviews, and retrospectives.
• Manage release planning and go-live readiness, including cutover coordination, environment and testing sequencing, and rollback criteria.
• Remove blockers actively rather than logging them; know when to solve it yourself and when to escalate.
• Track and report delivery metrics (throughput, predictability, defect trends, schedule variance) and use them to improve how the program runs.

Planning, Risk & Governance
• Maintain RAID logs across the program; proactively identify risks and issues, drive mitigation, and escalate before a committed date is threatened.
• Manage scope, schedule, and cost changes through a defined change control process with clear decision records.
• Forecast capacity against committed work and flag over-allocation before it becomes a slipped date.
• Prepare and deliver concise status reporting to internal leadership and external client stakeholders - health, risk, decisions needed, and what changed since last time.
• Apply Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid methodology as the program requires; adapt the process to the work rather than the reverse.
• Establish and maintain lightweight program documentation in Confluence so that context survives beyond any one person.

Product Partnership
• Contribute to the DLP roadmap in partnership with Product - informing sequencing, feasibility, and scope based on delivery reality.
• Translate roadmap intent into epics, milestones, and an executable delivery plan with clear definitions of done.
• Author and refine requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria in partnership with Product and Business Analysis.
• Participate in discovery with lenders, internal subject matter experts, implementation teams, and support to understand the problem behind the request.
• Pressure-test proposed scope against capacity, technical dependencies, and compliance deadlines - and be able to explain the trade-offs you recommended.

Stakeholder & Client Engagement
• Serve as the primary delivery point of contact between client-facing teams and engineering, translating business language into technical requirements and technical constraints back into business impact.
• Participate in client calls, requirement sessions, and escalations; align expectations on scope, timing, and delivery.
• Partner with Implementation on new client onboarding where platform configuration or enhancement is involved.
• Coordinate with third-party vendors and integration partners on scope, testing, and certification timelines.

Requirements

Required Skills and Experience

Experience
• Minimum 5 years managing technology delivery in environments with multiple stakeholders, including at least 2 years running programs or projects that span more than one engineering team.
• Mortgage lending domain experience - demonstrated working knowledge of the loan origination lifecycle (application/POS, processing, underwriting, closing, funding, post-close) and of at least one origination or servicing platform.
• Proven delivery track record - multiple concurrent programs brought to committed dates, with evidence of how you handled the ones that went sideways.
• Agile delivery - hands-on experience driving Scrum or Kanban teams and managing a backlog, plus practical experience with Waterfall or hybrid delivery where the client or the work demands it.
• Requirements fluency - experience authoring or co-authoring epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria that engineering teams built from directly.
• Dependency and integration management - experience coordinating delivery that depends on third-party vendors or external certification timelines.

Skills and Tools
• Jira and Confluence (or equivalent) for delivery tracking, cross-team visibility, and program documentation.
• Program planning tools such as MS Project, Smartsheet, or Azure DevOps; advanced Microsoft Office Suite skills, including Excel.
• Technical fluency sufficient to read API documentation, reason about REST integrations and data flow, and hold a credible design conversation with engineers. You do not need to write production code.
• Metrics and KPIs - ability to instrument a program so that status is evidenced by data rather than asserted in a meeting.
• Communication - superior written and verbal communication, including direct client-facing interaction and executive-level status reporting.
• Judgment - strong decision-making, negotiation, and conflict management; comfortable delivering bad news early and explaining why.

Preferred Qualifications
• Hands-on experience with a loan origination system (LOS), point-of-sale (POS), or digital lending platform - as a program manager, product owner, implementation lead, or power user.
• Familiarity with mortgage regulatory and investor requirements: TRID, RESPA, ECOA/HMDA, state licensing, and Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac delivery requirements.
• Experience with third-party mortgage integrations - pricing engines (Optimal Blue), credit, AUS (DU/LPA), verification services, appraisal, or document preparation vendors.
• Experience running client implementations for bank or credit union customers.
• Working SQL for basic data pulls and validation.
• PMP, PgMP, SAFe, or CSM / PSM certification.
• Prior experience at a company of similar scale, where the program manager also carries requirements and product partnership rather than handing off to a separate product organization.

Education
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field - or equivalent professional experience.