Senior Product Manager (Commercial Lending)

Location

127 Public Square, Cleveland Ohio

About the Role

We are seeking a Sr. Product Manager, Commercial Lending to lead the strategy, design, delivery, and ongoing evolution of a modern streamlined commercial loan origination and underwriting platform. The role will define a relationship-centered, workflow-driven lending experience that connects client and banker intake, credit assessment, underwriting, approval, closing, booking, servicing handoffs, monitoring, renewals, and modifications across commercial lending segments.

This is a senior product leadership role with accountability for product vision, business outcomes, team development, and end-to-end execution. The successful candidate will translate lending, credit, risk, operations, data, and technology needs into a coherent product strategy; establish scalable operating and control frameworks; and lead cross-functional teams through discovery, design, prototyping, refinement, delivery, adoption, and continuous optimization.

Success will be evaluated through measurable improvements in client and colleague experience, credit cycle time, straight-through processing, operational efficiency, data quality, risk and control effectiveness, adoption, and speed to revenue, not solely through the volume of technology delivered.

Key Responsibilities

• Product Vision, Strategy & Outcomes

• Own and maintain the Product vision, strategy, roadmap, and investment priorities for the commercial lending origination platform, aligned with the broader Commercial and Institutional C&I Lending strategy and product-family architecture.

• Define target outcomes, KPIs, and OKRs; align measures with senior leadership and use them to guide prioritization, funding, and product decisions.

• Lead the product through its full lifecycle, from discovery and business-case development through continuous discovery, design, continuous delivery, market readiness, & adoption.

• Use client, colleague, operational, financial, risk, control, and market insights to make strategic and tactical recommendations that maximize product-family value.

• Commercial Lending Transformation & Domain Expertise

• Develop deep expertise across the Small Business, Business Banking and Commercial lending lifecycle, including opportunity intake, credit structuring, underwriting, approval, documentation, closing, booking, servicing handoffs, portfolio monitoring, renewals, modifications, and workout-related workflows.

• Lead simplification and standardization of lending processes while preserving necessary differences based on client segment, exposure, product, collateral, risk, regulatory requirements, and deal complexity.

• Partner with business, credit, operations, risk, legal, compliance, data, and technology leaders to define future-state operating models, decision rights, controls, and systems of record.

• Ensure product design supports scalable workflow automation, exception management, straight-through processing, human judgment where required, and responsible use of AI-enabled capabilities.

• Discovery, Product Design & Prioritization

• Lead continuous product discovery addressing value, usability, feasibility, viability, risk, and control considerations.

• Frame ambiguous business needs as clear problem statements, hypotheses, journey maps, capability requirements, prototypes, minimum viable products (MVPs), and proofs of concept (POCs).

• Prioritize the roadmap and backlogs across product teams based on customer value, business benefit, risk reduction, architecture, dependencies, capacity, and implementation readiness.

• Define and validate epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and testing expectations; inspect product progress through each iteration and accept outcomes against the product intent.

• Platform, Architecture, Data & Integration Leadership

• Partner with Engineering to define the target state requirements, integration strategy, and technical capabilities required to deliver and sustain client and user value.

• Guide integration across client and banker channels, CRM, pricing and profitability, credit decisioning, collateral, document management, loan accounting, reporting, data platforms, and third-party services.

• Work with data owners and stewards to define authoritative sources, common data definitions, lineage, quality controls, access requirements, and reusable data assets across the lending lifecycle.

• Partner with technology to balance near-term delivery with scalability, resilience, security, maintainability, infrastructure needs, and long-term platform economics.

• Delivery, Dependencies & Product Operations

• Provide vision and direction to product owners and cross-functional squads; maintain transparent roadmaps, healthy backlogs, delivery plans, and executive reporting.

• Manage cross-team dependencies, risks, impediments, decisions, and customer-impacting issues; escalate promptly and drive issues to resolution.

• Establish testing frameworks across functional, integration, regression, user acceptance, operational readiness, data, and control validation.

• Partner with Engineering Leaders and Change Management Leaders on release planning, implementation readiness, post-launch validation, incident learning, and transition to a sustainable run-state.

• Communicate product-team capacity and resource needs to portfolio and program leadership and support disciplined planning against available capacity.

• Risk, Controls & Governance

• Embed risk, regulatory, security, data, model, third-party, and operational-control requirements throughout discovery, design, delivery, and operation.

• Implement change-management and governance processes for all initiatives and maintain required enterprise and departmental controls and documentation.

• Partner with first- and second-line risk functions to identify, assess, manage, and escalate risks while enabling responsible product innovation.

• Develop and coach teams to recognize risk, design effective controls, document decisions, and manage customer-impacting issues with urgency and accountability.

• Adoption, Change & Performance Management

• Lead product adoption and change strategy across affected lines of business and functions, including stakeholder readiness, communications, training, procedure updates, and reinforcement.

• Monitor adoption, workflow performance, quality, capacity, client and colleague feedback, financial outcomes, risk indicators, and control results; convert findings into roadmap action.

• Collaborate with business and go-to-market partners to launch new capabilities, establish value propositions, and ensure users understand both the required behavior and the benefit of change.

• People Leadership & Product Capability Building

• Manage and develop a team of product professionals, with responsibility for hiring, onboarding, goal setting, coaching, mentoring, performance management, and succession planning.

• Build product-management capability through training, standards, role clarity, practical coaching, and consistent application of discovery, prioritization, delivery, and measurement practices.

• Create a culture of accountability, ownership, constructive challenge, and learning by empowering decisions as close to the work as practical.

• Influence and negotiate across shared services, product families, business units, and external partners without relying solely on formal authority.

• Additional Functions

• Performs other duties as assigned; duties, responsibilities and/or activities may change, or new ones may be assigned at any time with or without notice

• Complies with all KeyBank policies and procedures, including without limitation, acting professionally at all times, conducting business ethically, avoiding conflicts of interest, and acting in the best interests of Key’s clients and Key.

• Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Economics, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

• Minimum 8 years of experience in product management, product ownership, engineering, lending transformation, or a related discipline within financial services or a technology-enabled regulated industry.

• Minimum 2 years of direct people-management experience, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and development of product professionals.

• Demonstrated ownership of a complex product or platform through strategy, discovery, roadmap definition, delivery, launch, adoption, and ongoing performance management.

• Experience modernizing complex workflows across multiple business units, functions, systems, and control environments.

• Strong ability to translate customer and business needs into product strategy, operating-model decisions, capabilities, requirements, and measurable outcomes.

• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional partners, make decisions with incomplete information, and manage material dependencies and risks.

• Experience working in Agile product delivery environments and maintaining disciplined product artifacts in tools such as Jira and Confluence.

• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, negotiation, and executive-communication skills.

• Preferred Qualifications

• Commercial lending or business lending experience spanning origination, underwriting, credit approval, closing, booking, servicing handoffs, or portfolio monitoring.

• Experience implementing, replacing, or materially modernizing a loan origination system (LOS) or comparable enterprise workflow platform.

• Knowledge of commercial credit, lending products, risk-based pricing, profitability, collateral, financial spreading, risk ratings, documentation, and delegated approval structures.

• Experience with platform selection, vendor due diligence, contracting, implementation, third-party risk, and build-versus-buy decisions.

• Experience with CRM and lending integrations, APIs, data platforms, workflow automation, analytics, and AI-enabled decision-support capabilities.

• Agile certification such as Certified Scrum Product Owner, Product Owner/Product Manager, or Scrum Master.

• Experience leading change across multiple lines of business in a bank or similarly regulated enterprise.

• Leadership Profile

• Strategic and outcome oriented, with the ability to connect enterprise vision to executable product choices.

• Deeply customer centered while maintaining sound risk, control, and regulatory judgment.

• Comfortable operating across business, credit, operations, data, architecture, and engineering domains.

• A systems thinker who can simplify complexity, identify patterns, and establish scalable standards.

• A servant leader who develops strong teams, creates clarity, removes barriers, and holds people accountable for results.

• Core Competencies

• All KeyBank employees are expected to demonstrate Key’s Values and abide by Key’s Code of Conduct.

• Travel

• Occasional travel

• Work

Location

Category

• Preferred locations include KeyBank's Banking Group Portfolio Management (BGPM) footprint locations. Role will typically be hybrid 3 days a week in office if a candidate is located near a KeyBank facility (non-branch). Otherwise, team may consider home based option (with travel as needed) if not located near a KeyBank location.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

This position is eligible to earn a base salary in the range of $96,000.00 - $181,000.00 annually. Placement within the pay range may differ based upon various factors, including but not limited to skills, experience and geographic location. Compensation for this role also includes eligibility for incentive compensation which may include production, commission, and/or discretionary incentives.

Key has implemented an approach to employee workspaces