Funding Associate

Ascent Developer Solutions•Encino, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Ascent Developer Solutions is a private lending platform serving real estate developers nationwide with financing for the acquisition, renovation, and construction of residential real estate. The Funding Associate executes daily loan fundings and construction draw releases across residential real estate asset classes. The role manages funding readiness, package review, wire preparation and initiation, disbursement tracking, and exception resolution across multiple funding partners and platforms. It coordinates with internal teams, institutional banks, warehouse lenders, and third-party custodians to fund transactions accurately and on time while maintaining approvals and segregation of duties. The role also uses AI, automation, and process improvements to reduce manual work and develop scalable funding operations. The position is based at Ascent’s Encino office on-site Monday through Thursday, with work-from-home on Fridays. The stated pay range is $90,000–$100,000 per year, with a discretionary annual bonus of 10%.

Requirements

At least three years of experience in private lending, mortgage banking, construction lending, specialty finance, treasury operations, or funding operations.
Experience reviewing funding packages, partner submissions, wire instructions, and calculations, and coordinating with institutional banks, warehouse lenders, and custodians.
Strong spreadsheet skills, including lookup formulas, data validation, exception reporting, and operational tracking.
Ability to learn new systems and partner workflows quickly.
Strong organization, clear communication, and independent problem-solving in a high-volume, deadline-driven environment.
Sound judgment to stop or escalate transactions when information does not reconcile and to drive outstanding issues through resolution.

Nice To Haves

Experience in residential bridge or construction lending and managing multiple warehouse facilities or institutional funding relationships.
Direct experience executing loan fundings and construction draw releases, including table and direct funding structures.
Experience with major institutional banks and their commercial banking and wire platforms.
Familiarity with major accounting systems, loan origination systems, treasury management platforms, and reporting tools.
Practical experience using AI, data transformation tools, workflow automation, or low-code platforms to improve operational processes while preserving appropriate controls.

Responsibilities

Manage the daily funding queue and calendar, tracking readiness, submission deadlines, bank cutoffs, approvals, and outstanding conditions.
Coordinate with internal teams and external funding parties to resolve conditions and meet funding deadlines.
Execute direct, table, wet, and dry funding workflows; review and submit complete, accurate funding packages according to each lending partner’s requirements.
Reconcile funding amounts across loan systems, requests, partner submissions, wire instructions, and reporting; resolve discrepancies and unsupported changes before release.
Maintain partner checklists, submission records, status updates, and post-funding follow-up; escalate at-risk transactions and support onboarding of new warehouse facilities and platforms.
Set up and maintain wire templates with banking partners, including additions, edits, and deactivations.
Prepare and initiate loan funding and construction draw wires through approved banking platforms and accounting systems, subject to independent approval and release.
Validate beneficiaries, instructions, amounts, dates, and supporting documents; ensure changes to instructions are independently verified under company procedures.
Track wire approvals, releases, Fed references, receipts, rejected or returned wires, and cancellations; reconcile scheduled versus released funds and coordinate recovery when needed.
Immediately escalate suspected fraud, duplicate payments, beneficiary discrepancies, unauthorized changes, and unresolved funding exceptions.
Manage the daily construction draw release queue and confirm required internal approvals before disbursement.
Validate approved draw amounts against construction budgets, holdbacks, prior disbursements, remaining commitments, and applicable loan limits.
Review approvals, inspections, invoices, lien waivers, budget detail, and wire instructions for operational completeness; escalate missing documents, insufficient holdbacks, and unsupported amounts.
Track approved draws through release and resolution, and confirm disbursements are accurately reflected in applicable systems and reporting.
Identify repetitive and error-prone work and use AI, spreadsheets, workflow automation, and low-code platforms to improve funding intake, document checks, queue management, wire preparation, tracking, and reporting.
Build standardized templates, checklists, dashboards, and exception workflows; reduce duplicate entry and improve consistency across systems.
Partner with Technology and Data on integration and development of a scalable treasury platform.
Document workflows and measure improvements in processing time, accuracy, visibility, and cutoff performance.
Preserve approvals, audit trails, segregation of duties, data security, and human review in automated or AI-assisted workflows.