Manager, Quality Assurance

Zippy was founded with one mission: to make getting a loan for a manufactured home simple, fast, and fully online. We believe modern manufactured homes are affordable, well-built, eco-friendly, and stylish, but finding a lender who understands this market can be challenging. That’s why Zippy focuses exclusively on manufactured home loans, offering a seamless, digital experience. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, with an office in Tempe, AZ, Zippy provides home loans and insurance to manufactured home buyers throughout the United States. Our remote-first team is spread across cities like Dallas, Houston, Knoxville, Omaha, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and several other states and cities. Backed by institutional investors, we offer competitive pay, stock options, and excellent benefits. At Zippy, we pride ourselves on our commitment to finance happiness through the power of home. We are dedicated to enhancing consumers' financial outcomes and tackling the affordable housing crisis through cutting-edge technology and innovative solutions. ROLE OVERVIEW The Manager, Quality Assurance is responsible for leading the company’s pre-close and post-close quality assurance programs across the loan origination lifecycle. This role oversees the people, workflows, and controls required to deliver timely, accurate, and consistent file reviews while identifying risks before they result in borrower, regulatory, operational, or investor impact. This position combines hands-on quality assurance expertise with strong people leadership. The Manager coaches and develops QA analysts, manages performance and capacity, maintains calibration and review consistency, and ensures findings are supported by policy, procedure, regulatory, or investor requirements. The role serves as the primary point of contact for finding disputes, reassignments, escalations, and cross-functional QA discussions. The Manager must be a subject matter expert in the end-to-end origination process and comfortable conducting detailed research across multiple systems in a highly ambiguous, rapidly changing environment. The role is expected to translate findings and trend data into practical recommendations that reduce repeat issues, streamline procedures, and strengthen quality without creating unnecessary operational friction. CORE RESPONSIBILITIES TEAM LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT · Lead, coach, and develop a team of QA professionals responsible for pre-close and post-close loan reviews · Establish clear expectations, hold regular one-on-one meetings, and provide timely, specific, and constructive feedback · Manage performance concerns promptly and consistently, including documenting expectations and improvement plans when needed · Assess individual and team training needs and deliver or coordinate training, calibration, mentoring, and development opportunities · Support employee engagement, retention, succession planning, and readiness for expanded responsibilities · Foster a professional, accountable, collaborative, and psychologically safe team environment QUALITY OVERSIGHT AND PROGRAM INTEGRITY · Oversee the execution of pre-close and post-close quality assurance reviews across the full loan origination process · Ensure reviews are accurate, consistently scored, completed within established service levels, and supported by clear evidence · Maintain strong quality controls by monitoring removal rates, investor findings, repeat findings, and other program-level measures · Conduct regular calibration sessions and targeted review validation to promote consistent interpretation and application of requirements · Ensure QA appropriately identifies policy, procedural, compliance, regulatory, documentation, and investor risks · Validate that findings are grounded in applicable policy, procedure, law, regulation, investor requirements, or documented business standards · Escalate material, systemic, or emerging risks and track agreed corrective actions through resolution OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND THROUGHPUT · Manage daily work queues, assignments, reassignments, priorities, and team capacity across pre-close and post-close reviews · Monitor pipeline volume, aging, turnaround times, and workload distribution; proactively address bottlenecks and service-level risk · Balance speed and quality so reviews support the origination process without weakening control effectiveness · Develop and maintain efficient, repeatable workflows across the multiple systems and tools used for QA research and documentation · Use operational data to identify staffing, training, workflow, or technology needs and recommend practical solutions · Maintain complete, accurate, and audit-ready records of reviews, findings, disputes, decisions, and remediation FINDINGS, DISPUTES, AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION · Lead weekly meetings with managers across the organization to review QA findings, trends, recurring issues, and remediation progress · Serve as the primary escalation point for disputed findings, review reassignments, and questions regarding QA conclusions · Evaluate disputes objectively, conduct additional research when needed, and make or facilitate timely, well-supported decisions · Communicate findings and expectations clearly, distinguishing isolated errors from systemic process or control weaknesses · Build productive working relationships with Origination, Underwriting, Operations, Compliance, Credit Risk, Technology, and other stakeholders while preserving QA’s independence · Translate QA data into concise, actionable insights for managers and senior leadership ORIGINATION EXPERTISE AND RESEARCH · Maintain subject matter expertise across the end-to-end loan origination process, including application, processing, underwriting, closing, funding, documentation, and post-close requirements · Interpret and apply internal policies, procedures, system requirements, regulatory obligations, and investor guidelines to complex file scenarios · Navigate multiple platforms and data sources to reconstruct file activity, validate evidence, and resolve questions or inconsistencies · Answer technical and procedural questions from QA analysts and cross-functional partners with clear reasoning and appropriate supporting authority · Remain current on policy, procedure, product, system, regulatory, and investor changes and translate those changes into QA practices and team training CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND STRATEGIC CONTRIBUTION · Analyze QA trends and root causes to identify systemic risks, inefficient procedures, training gaps, and opportunities for automation or control improvement · Proactively develop and implement improvements that reduce repeat findings, strengthen outcomes, and increase throughput without sacrificing quality · Partner with managers to simplify or clarify procedures and preventive controls while maintaining appropriate quality and risk standards · Define success measures for improvement efforts and evaluate whether changes produce the intended results · Contribute to QA planning, departmental goals, and broader Risk initiatives · Lead the team calmly and effectively through changes in policy, process, systems, organizational priorities, and volume QUALIFICATIONS · 7+ years of progressive experience in mortgage, consumer lending, manufactured housing lending, loan operations, underwriting, quality assurance, quality control, compliance, or a comparable financial services function · 3+ years of direct people-management experience, including coaching, performance management, training, workload planning, and employee development · Demonstrated expertise in the end-to-end loan origination lifecycle and the ability to evaluate a complete loan file rather than a single functional component · Experience overseeing both pre-close and post-close quality reviews strongly preferred · Proven ability to interpret and apply policies, procedures, regulations, and i