Senior Director, Transaction Manager

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Senior Director, Transaction Manager

Transaction Management and Advisory (TM&A) — Bay Area

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California. Some travel will be required for site visits, negotiations, and client and team meetings.

You’ll help a Fortune 100 global technology company decide how to shape a large and complex Bay Area real estate portfolio that combines owned and leased space — and then close the deals that turn those decisions into results. We’re looking for a Senior Director, Transaction Manager to join our new Bay Area Transaction Management and Advisory (TM&A) team as its senior deal lead. You’ll frame the strategic options on complex acquisitions, dispositions, ground leases, joint ventures, redevelopments, leases and renewals, steer the analysis behind them, and carry each recommendation from first idea through approval and execution.

What this job involves

About the role

You’ll join a high-performing, multidisciplinary team delivering Transaction Management and Advisory services to one of JLL’s largest global technology clients. The client pairs enormous scale with a fast-moving, founder-style culture: an ownership mentality, a healthy disregard for the impossible and an unrelenting focus on the people who use its products. We’ll bring the same energy, transparency and bias for action.

This portfolio is anything but static, and it combines owned campuses with a substantial leased footprint. Campuses get assembled, buildings change purpose, entitlements shift, lease dates approach, and business needs move faster than most real estate cycles. One decision rarely stands alone: selling an asset changes carry cost, a lease expiration changes the case for owning, redeveloping a site changes capital needs and occupancy, and leasing up a building changes the case for the next acquisition. You’ll look at every transaction through both lenses, as an owner and as a tenant, so the client sees the trade-offs before it commits.

You’ll work alongside the team’s portfolio strategy and analytics lead, who builds the scenario models and portfolio data, and you’ll direct the analysts and coordinators supporting your transactions. The strategic question, the recommendation and the outcome are yours. You’ll report to the Managing Director, Transaction Management and Advisory (TM&A) Lead.

Critical responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

Portfolio strategy and deal leadership

• Define the question each transaction needs to answer before the work begins and frame the strategic options for owned and leased assets: acquire, hold, sell, reposition, lease up, develop, redevelop, lease, renew, restructure or exit.

• Own the recommendation on complex, high-value transactions — acquisitions, dispositions, sale-leasebacks, ground leases, joint ventures, and large or complex leases, renewals and restructures — from strategy through negotiation to execution.

• Bring both lenses to every decision. Weigh each transaction as an owner would (capital, yield, asset value and optionality) and as a tenant would (flexibility, occupancy cost, term, exit rights, and fit with headcount and workplace needs), including own-versus-lease and sale-leaseback questions.

• Connect decisions across the portfolio. Show how a sale, redevelopment or lease-up changes carry cost, capital needs, occupancy and the next decision on the list.

• Stress-test every recommendation. Challenge the assumptions behind the model, know which ones actually move the answer, and bring downside cases and decision triggers to the client alongside the preferred path.

• Own the Critical Lease Event pipeline for your assigned locations: monitor critical dates, identify optimization opportunities with other stakeholders, and take an active part in strategic plan formation so there is ample time to execute on aligned strategies. Transaction execution

• Direct broker partners to draft and negotiate Requests for Proposals (RFPs), Letters of Intent (LOIs), leases, subleases, Purchase and Sale Agreements (PSAs) and license agreements from inception to execution.

• Make sure all due diligence and approval requirements are complete for every transaction, including tax, risk, accounting, environmental, health and safety, and anti-corruption reviews.

• Prepare executive-ready business cases that open with the decision needed: the objective, key takeaways, the ask and the financial impact. Draft spend approval documentation and work with the client’s finance team on operating expense and capital expense analysis before lease commitment.

• Work with internal and external legal counsel to prepare, negotiate and execute all transaction documentation.

• Manage a complex, dynamic deal flow with an emphasis on speed and quality, and escalate early on the most sensitive deals. Team leadership

• Guide and coach the analysts, associates and coordinators supporting your transactions, and review their models and deliverables before they reach the client.

• Manage cross-functional teams through influence rather than direct authority, including colleagues across JLL Capital Markets, Project and Development Services, Property and Asset Management and Research.

• Present findings to senior client real estate and finance leaders, and defend your assumptions with confidence and humility. Raising the bar

• Regularly liaise with other Transaction Managers and other key delivery partners from JLL and other service providers delivering integration, data integrity, and project and facilities management, to share what works.

• Draw on JLL Research and our analytics teams, and bring research insights and new ideas to regional client leadership.

• See around corners. Flag the option date, market shift, entitlement risk or capital need that’s coming before it reaches the client’s desk, and bring a recommended response.

• Leverage, invent and simplify best practices, including the continuous improvement of process, tools and templates.

• Use JLL-approved automation and AI tools to speed up routine work, and apply your own judgment before anything reaches the client.

• Proactively identify process inefficiencies, formulate and execute implementation plans, then track and demonstrate the results. Client and stakeholder management

• Deliver transaction management service that meets JLL’s contractual obligations.

• Develop and maintain a detailed understanding of the client’s business and the factors shaping its requirements, and keep the people who use the client’s products at the center of your recommendations.

• Build trusted relationships with the client’s real estate, finance, tax, legal, construction and workplace teams, with respect for every partner and colleague. Financial management

• Contribute to the achievement of key performance indicators, service levels and other contracted measures.

• Support the preparation of monthly, quarterly and semi-annual business reports covering highs, lows, process improvements, help needed and lessons learned, plus ad-hoc reports as the client requests.

• Bring the JLL platform to the client by introducing JLL products and services that help it achieve its business objectives. Every day is different, and in all of it we’d encourage you to show your ingenuity, with deep respect for the client’s partners and colleagues at every turn and a constant focus on the people who use the client’s products.

What success looks like

• In your first 90 days: you’ll lead the strategy and execution on at least one active portfolio transaction, and you’ll know the client’s portfolio, decision process and key stakeholders.

• By six months: client leaders will come to you early on complex owned and leased asset decisions, and the analysis behind your recommendations will stand up to challenge.

• By the end of your first year: you’ll be the team’s senior voice on transaction strategy, with a pipeline moving on schedule and at least one colleague you’ve helped grow.

Sound like you? To apply you need to be / have:

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in real estate, finance, economics, business or a related field.

• 10+ years’ experience in corporate real estate, transaction management, real estate finance, capital markets, asset management or development advisory, with a track record of leading complex, high-value transactions and portfolios of size and complexity.

• Hands-on experience advising on both sides of a portfolio: owner decisions (acquisitions, dispositions, hold-versus-sell, sale-leasebacks, ground leases, joint ventures, development or redevelopment) and occupier decisions (leases, renewals, restructures, terminations and own-versus-lease), ideally for a large corporate occupier or an institutional-quality portfolio.

• Strong command of real estate finance. You can read, challenge and defend a multi-scenario model: discounted cash flow, net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), cap rates, yield on cost, net effective rent, and the P&L, cash and balance sheet effects of owning versus leasing.

• A track record of turning complex analysis into a clear recommendation for senior executives, in writing and in person, with the ability to present a compelling narrative in six pages or less.

• Proven ability to thrive in a matrixed environment, leading cross-functional teams through influence.

• Strong ability to identify and solve ambiguous problems, and a natural habit of looking around corners to anticipate risks and opportunities.

• An ownership mentality: you raise your hand and take on whatever is needed to achieve the objective, and you champion speed, flexibility and frugality in the face of rapid change and heavy workload.

• Effective resource and project management skills, and the ability to run several complex workstreams at once.

• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, and the confidence to work with senior clients independently every day. Preferred

• Master’s degree or MBA in real estate, finance or a related field.

• Knowledge of Bay Area markets, land use and entitlement, including the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

• Familiarity with lease and ownership accounting, including ASC 842 (the lease accounting standard), depreciation and impairment.

• Experience supporting a corporate occupier, a technology campus portfolio or a large portfolio that combines owned and leased real estate.

• Experience with ARGUS or comparable cash flow and valuation software.

• Experience mentoring or reviewing the work of analysts and associates.

Compensation

• Range listed below is for base salary and bonus.

What you can expect from us

We are an entrepreneurial, inclusive culture which upholds our core values to be direct, decisive, and humble; We believe the best inspires the best, so we invest in supporting each other, learning together, and celebrating our success. We succeed together. Our Total Rewards program reflects our commitment to helping you achieve your ambitions in career, recognition, well-being, benefits and pay. With us, you will develop your strengths and enjoy a career full of varied experiences. We can’t wait to see where your ambitions take you at JLL.

About JLL

We are JLL—a leading professional services and investment management firm specializing in real estate. We shape the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding experiences.