Vice President, Pricing and Secondary Operations

Position Summary

The Vice President of Pricing and Secondary Operations owns the intersection where pricing strategy becomes pricing execution. This role is accountable for the product and pricing engine (PPE), the lock desk, and every operational process and system that touches a price — from the moment a scenario is priced through lock, change, redisclosure, and delivery.

Pricing moves through the PPE, the company’s proprietary wholesale software platform (CODA), the Encompass loan origination system, and the investor and vendor connections that surround them. The VP is the single accountable owner of that chain, the configurations that drive it, the integrations that carry it, and the controls that keep what the borrower is quoted, what is locked, and what is disclosed in agreement.

Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Pricing and Margin Management, the VP leads the Lock Desk Manager and the pricing engine administration team, and partners closely with Secondary Marketing, Loan Operations, Underwriting, Product, Technology, and Compliance to protect execution accuracy, margin integrity, and speed to market across the retail and wholesale channels.

Core Mandate: The Pricing Intersection

Success in this role is measured by how well the pieces connect. The VP is expected to own the seams between:

•    The pricing engine — product eligibility, rules, margins, adjustments, hedge and lock logic, and the day-to-day administration and change control that keeps them accurate.

•    Mortgage operations that impact pricing — processing, underwriting, and closing workflows where a data change, a condition, or a program switch alters price, and where operational behavior determines whether pricing holds.

•    The lock desk — locks, extensions, relocks, renegotiations, exceptions, worst-case pricing, and the policy and service standards that govern them.

•    Disclosures — partnering with Loan Operations and Compliance, who own the disclosure function, to ensure pricing and fee data flows accurately and on time into initial disclosures and redisclosures, and that pricing-driven defects are identified and resolved at the source.

•    Everything the pricing engine integrates with — the proprietary wholesale platform, the Encompass LOS, investor and agency connections, and downstream reporting — including the field mappings, API behavior, and data integrity that make those integrations trustworthy.

Key Responsibilities

Pricing Engine Ownership and Administration

•    Own the configuration, performance, governance, and roadmap of the product and pricing engine (Optimal Blue) across the retail and wholesale channels.

•    Direct the pricing engine administration team, establishing standards for build quality, peer review, documentation, and turnaround time on product and pricing changes.

•    Oversee the build and maintenance of product eligibility, pricing rules, margins, adjustments, and profile hierarchies so that pricing is accurate the first time and reproducible on demand.

•    Implement disciplined change management for pricing configuration: request intake, prioritization, test cases, sandbox validation, release windows, approvals, rollback, and post-release verification.

•    Maintain a complete audit trail of who changed what, when, why, and with whose approval.

•    Maintain current written policies, procedures, and system documentation for pricing configuration, lock desk operations, and integration controls.

Systems Integration and Data Integrity

•    Own the functional integrity of every integration between the pricing engine and the systems around it — the proprietary wholesale platform, the Encompass LOS, investor and vendor connections, and reporting and analytics environments.

•    Partner with Technology and internal development to specify, test, and validate pricing-related integrations, field mappings, and API behavior; serve as the business owner and final approver for pricing integration releases.

•    Establish monitoring and reconciliation that detects pricing and lock data discrepancies between systems before they reach a borrower, a broker, or an investor.

•    Lead the pricing workstream for platform upgrades, new channel or product launches, investor onboarding, and vendor conversions.

Lock Desk Leadership

•    Lead the Lock Desk Manager and the lock desk function, setting policy, service level standards, escalation paths, and quality expectations for both channels.

•    Govern lock policy end to end: rate lock, extension, relock, renegotiation, float-down, exception, and worst-case pricing, with clear authority limits and documented approvals.

•    Monitor lock desk performance, exception volume and cost, extension trends, and pull-through, and act on what the data shows.

•    Ensure lock desk workflows are embedded correctly in the pricing engine, the wholesale platform, and the LOS rather than sustained by manual workarounds.

•    Serve as the senior escalation point for pricing and lock disputes with loan officers, brokers, and internal partners.

Leadership and Team Development

•    Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team spanning lock desk operations and pricing engine administration.

•    Establish cross-training and documented redundancy so that no single configuration, integration, or lock process depends on one person.

•    Set clear goals and performance standards, coach to them, and build the bench for succession.

Qualifications

•    Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or CFA preferred.

•    8 years in mortgage secondary marketing, pricing, or capital markets operations, including 3 years leading teams.

•    Hands-on expertise administering a product and pricing engine — Optimal Blue strongly preferred — including product and pricing rule builds, margin and adjustment configuration, and release testing.

•    Working knowledge of Encompass or a comparable loan origination system, and practical experience with LOS-to-PPE integration.

•    Demonstrated experience owning or governing a lock desk, including lock policy, exceptions, and extensions.

•    Experience in both retail and wholesale channels preferred, including familiarity with broker-facing pricing platforms.

•    Track record leading system implementations, integrations, or conversions in a mortgage environment.

•    Working knowledge of the regulatory framework governing pricing and disclosures (TRID, fair lending, tolerance and cure requirements).

Skills and Competencies

•    Systems thinking — able to hold the full pricing chain in view and anticipate how a change in one system surfaces in another.

•    Technical fluency — advanced Excel; comfort with SQL, APIs, data mapping, and reporting tools such as Power BI or Tableau.

•    Operational discipline — builds controls, documentation, and repeatable process where informal practice has been the norm.

•    Analytical judgment — uses data to diagnose root cause rather than treat symptoms.

•    Leadership — develops people and raises the standard of the function, not just its output.

Measures of Success

•    Pricing configuration changes are delivered accurately, on schedule, and with documented testing and approval.

•    Pricing and lock data remain consistent across the pricing engine, the wholesale platform, and the LOS.

•    Pricing-driven disclosure defects, tolerance cures, and pricing exceptions trend down.

•    Lock desk service levels are met consistently, with exception volume and cost within target.

•    Margin performance tracks to plan, with variances explained and addressed.

•    New products, programs, and investors launch on time with pricing fully configured, integrated, and tested.