Manager / Senior Manager, Lease Administration & Real Estate Legal Operations

Carvana•Tempe, AZ

About The Position

This role involves leading and managing all lease administration and property management operations for Carvana’s national real estate portfolio. The position requires ensuring precise workflow execution, proactive tracking of contractual obligations, and maintaining an institutional standard of operation. The individual will build, lead, and develop a high-performing team, set performance expectations, provide coaching, and drive accountability with direct reports and third-party vendors. This role also serves as the senior relationship owner for landlord communications, escalated counterparty matters, and high-stakes portfolio obligations, representing Carvana as a credible partner. Key responsibilities include designing and owning systems for COI management, quarterly reporting, CAM reconciliations, payment management, and insurance compliance. The role oversees portfolio database integrity, audits data input, and ensures the accuracy of the portfolio management platform. Additionally, the position involves developing portfolio intelligence by synthesizing data to provide leadership with actionable insights into portfolio risk, upcoming obligations, and growth planning. A crucial aspect is partnering with Carvana’s Real Estate and Licensing teams to ensure smooth project launches and coordinating cross-functional dependencies when new real estate is added to the portfolio. The role also leads review and coordination for landlord-tenant matters, lease renewals/terminations, amendments, and related workflows. It involves managing easement, encroachment, and right-of-way issues, overseeing site improvement approvals, and acting as the team’s point of contact for condemnation and eminent domain matters. The position requires conducting comprehensive lease reviews and abstracts, interpreting lease provisions, identifying key obligations, rights, and risks, and providing clear summaries to stakeholders. Ownership extends to estoppel certificates, SNDAs, access requests, and subordination agreements, managing counterparty relationships, timelines, and documentation. The role partners with Legal Operations to enhance and improve legal workflows, enabling attorney resources to focus on high-complexity matters. A significant requirement is the responsible and proactive leverage of AI tools to build reliable work products and increase team throughput.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution required.
15+ years of directly relevant experience in commercial property management, real estate legal operations, or a corporate in-house real estate environment with substantial transactional and lease administration exposure. Experience spanning property management, LOI/lease review, and acquisition or disposition support is highly desirable.
Demonstrated legal fluency: you can independently review, interpret, and identify key terms in leases, legal notices, estoppels, SNDAs, and related real estate documents — including easements, encroachments, right-of-way agreements, site improvement/entitlement matters, and condemnation/eminent domain proceedings — and you have clear, experience-based judgment about when something requires an attorney or an escalation.
Transactional interface experience: you have worked alongside deal teams, brokers, and outside counsel in a transactional real estate context. You understand how deals get done and how to begin planning for properties to be added to a portfolio once they are through diligence or approaching lease commencement or closing.
Lease commencement and site readiness experience: you have partnered closely with real estate, construction, legal, and operations teams to coordinate lease commencement conditions, monitor site readiness, and work directly with landlords to satisfy lease obligations and critical milestones, enabling timely occupancy and successful site launch.
Proven people leadership: you have built, managed, and developed individual contributors or small teams in a fast-paced, high-accountability environment; you set high expectations, provide appropriate support, deliver direct feedback, and hold people to outcomes — not just effort.
Independent operator: you execute at a high level under strategic guidance without requiring task-level direction; you make decisions, own outcomes, proactively communicate when course correction is needed, and escalate the right things at the right time.
Advanced and applied AI proficiency: not just willingness to learn — a demonstrated track record of building reliable, tested workflows using AI tools to increase the quality and speed of legal and operational work product. This is a real requirement, not a checkbox.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook), Adobe Acrobat, DocuSign, Wrike, G Suite, and comparable platforms.
Superior organizational discipline, advanced attention to detail, and the initiative to build and continuously improve systems rather than maintain the status quo.
Enthusiasm and capacity to thrive in a rapidly growing, high-performance environment where the role will evolve as the company scales — and where the best people run toward that, not away from it.

Nice To Haves

A paralegal certificate, RPA (Real Property Administrator), CPM, or similar professional credential is a meaningful differentiator and will be weighted accordingly.

Responsibilities

Own and lead all lease administration and property management operations for Carvana’s national real estate portfolio, ensuring workflows are executed with precision, contractual obligations are tracked proactively, and the function operates at an institutional standard.
Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team responsible for day-to-day property management execution; set clear performance expectations, provide consistent coaching and feedback, and drive accountability across direct reports and third-party vendors (including PropertyWorks and similar service partners).
Serve as the senior relationship owner for landlord communications, escalated counterparty matters, and high-stakes portfolio obligations — representing Carvana as a credible, high-judgment partner in all external interactions.
Design and own systems and workflows for COI management, quarterly reporting, CAM reconciliations, rent, tax, and utility payment management, insurance compliance, and all other recurring portfolio management obligations — building for scale and for success, not just maintenance.
Oversee portfolio database integrity; audit data input for all new sites and ensure the company’s portfolio management platform reflects accurate, current, and complete information at all times.
Develop portfolio intelligence — synthesizing data across real estate, analytics, legal, and operations to give leadership clear, actionable visibility into portfolio risk, upcoming obligations, and growth planning inputs.
Partner directly with Carvana’s Real Estate and Licensing teams to ensure smooth and successful execution of project launches. Align and coordinate cross-functional dependencies when real estate is added to the portfolio to mitigate operational or launch impediments.
Lead review, coordination, or obtaining legal support as needed for landlord-tenant matters, lease renewals or terminations, amendments, and related workflow.
Manage easement, encroachment, and right-of-way issues; oversee site improvement approvals for lease compliance, permitting, and landlord consent; and act as the team’s point of contact on condemnation and eminent domain matters, coordinating with counsel and appraisers as needed.
Conduct comprehensive lease reviews and abstracts; interpret lease provisions with confidence; identify key obligations, rights, and risks; and provide clear, actionable summaries to real estate, legal, and operations stakeholders with sound business judgment and pragmatism.
Own estoppel certificates, SNDAs, access requests, subordination agreements, and related legal workflow from initiation through execution — independently managing counterparty relationships, timelines, and documentation, supported by Legal, but run by this team.
Partner with Legal Operations to continuously identify legal workflow that can be enhanced, improved, or made more efficient — raising the bar on what this function handles independently and enabling attorney resources to remain focused on highest-complexity matters.
Leverage AI tools responsibly, proactively, and with discipline to build tested, reliable work product and increase team throughput across tasks; bring genuine applied proficiency, not surface-level familiarity.