Director, Small Business Credit Underwriting

Jobtailor; New Jersey; On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking an experienced underwriting leader in New Jersey to oversee a small business lending portfolio. You will drive manual underwriting quality, manage a growing team across locations, and push data-driven enhancements to credit decisioning and policy.

You will own queue management, SLA adherence, and the review of large, complex exposures while shaping hiring, training, and quality assurance programs to sustain high performance and growth.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or a related field.
• 10 years of experience in commercial or small business credit.
• Track record of underwriting large-dollar commercial exposures and final call on them.
• Strong financial statement analysis skills including business financials, bank statements, and cash flow.
• 5 years managing people, including direct leadership of teams of 5–10 or more.
• Experience running production credit environments with SLAs, capacity constraints, and volume growth.
• Experience improving operations measurably.
• Comfort using data and analytics and conversing with modelers and data scientists.
• Sound judgment under ambiguity and credibility to defend credit decisions to senior stakeholders.
• Valid and unrestricted U.S. work authorization; sponsorship not available.

Responsibilities

• Lead manual underwriting for the small business lending portfolio.
• Own day-to-day underwriting execution and credit decision quality.
• Scale the underwriting team as volume grows.
• Bring forward new data sources and approaches to improve the credit decisioning framework.
• Manage queue operations, decision quality, turnaround time, and adherence to credit policy.
• Personally adjudicate and review the largest and most complex exposures, including escalations and exceptions.
• Lead, coach, and grow a team of 8–10 underwriters across multiple locations.
• Build hiring, training, calibration, and quality assurance structures.
• Define and manage operating metrics including capacity models, productivity, decision accuracy, override rates, and exception rates.
• Partner with decision science and credit policy to codify underwriter judgment into scorecards, rules, and automated decisioning.
• Contribute to credit policy development, including tiering, exception frameworks, and manual-review thresholds.
• Work with product, engineering, and operations to improve underwriting workflows and tooling.
• Represent underwriting in portfolio, loss, and audit reviews with data-backed analysis.

Skills

Manual underwriting

Financial statement analysis

Team leadership

Credit policy development

Data-driven decision making

Credit decisioning

Capacity modeling

Operational improvement

Commercial credit

Data analytics

Risk assessment

Quality assurance

SLA management

Leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or a related field

Job description

• Lead manual underwriting for the small business lending portfolio
• Own day-to-day underwriting execution and credit decision quality
• Scale the underwriting team as volume grows
• Bring forward new data sources and approaches to improve the credit decisioning framework
• Manage queue operations, decision quality, turnaround time, and adherence to credit policy
• Personally adjudicate and review the largest and most complex commercial exposures, including escalations and exceptions
• Lead, coach, and grow a team of 8–10 underwriters across multiple locations
• Build hiring, training, calibration, and quality assurance structures
• Define and manage operating metrics including capacity models, productivity, decision accuracy, override rates, and exception rates
• Partner with decision science and credit policy to codify underwriter judgment into scorecards, rules, and automated decisioning
• Contribute to credit policy development, including tiering, exception frameworks, and manual-review thresholds
• Work with product, engineering, and operations partners to improve underwriting workflows and tooling
• Represent underwriting in portfolio, loss, and audit reviews with data-backed analysis

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, or a related field
• 10 years of experience in commercial or small business credit
• Track record of underwriting large-dollar commercial exposures and making the final call on them
• Strong financial statement analysis skills, including business financials, bank statements, and cash flow
• 5 years managing people, including direct leadership of teams of 5–10 or more
• Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain underwriting talent
• Experience running a production credit environment with SLAs, capacity constraints, and volume growth
• Experience improving operations measurably
• Comfort using data and analytics and conversing with modelers and data scientists
• Sound judgment under ambiguity and credibility to defend credit decisions to senior stakeholders
• Valid and unrestricted U.S. work authorization; candidates requiring sponsorship now or in the future will not be considered

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in manual underwriting for small business lending, with a strong focus on credit decision quality, team leadership, and operational efficiency. Proficient in financial statement analysis and capable of managing complex commercial exposures while improving underwriting processes through data-driven insights.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Manual Underwriting
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Team Leadership
• Credit Policy Development
• Data-Driven Decision Making

Hard Skills

• Underwriting
• Credit Decisioning
• Financial Analysis
• Capacity Modeling
• Operational Improvement
• Commercial Credit
• Data Analytics
• Risk Assessment
• Quality Assurance
• SLA Management

Soft Skills

• Leadership
• Coaching
• Judgment Under Ambiguity
• Communication
• Collaboration

Industry Keywords

• Small Business Lending
• Credit Policy
• Commercial Exposures
• Production Credit Environment
• Underwriter Judgment