Transactions Officer – Government Housing Programs

Transactions Officer – Government Housing Programs at JLL What this job involves: JLL's Public Institutions group is seeking a Transactions Officer to join our advisory engagement supporting the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Housing (ODASW(H)). This role carries an assigned deal book spanning the Family Housing and Unaccompanied Housing portfolios of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) - a national pipeline of restructure, recapitalization, and new development transactions. This is a deal-book leadership seat, not an analyst role. You will drive the shaping and testing of financing courses of action for each transaction, serve as the single point of continuity for your deals from intake through close, and own the quality of the decision package that reaches the Deputy Assistant Secretary. You will work alongside the program's senior transactions advisor and Program Manager, and where the specialist panel does not converge on a recommendation, you hold a deciding voice. Behind every deal you lead is a fully staffed specialist bench — capital markets, construction and development, credit and OMB scoring, financial modeling, and policy and Congressional affairs — sequenced against your transaction's timeline. The pipeline is multi-year and national in scope, with sustained deal flow rather than a single-transaction engagement.

About the Program: The Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) is one of the federal government's most complex and consequential public-private partnership (P3) real estate/housing programs, comprising a $32 billion portfolio of 87 active projects across 150 military installations nationwide. Established under 10 USC and implemented through 50-year ground leases between the Department of War and private residential developers, MHPI provides family housing, unaccompanied housing, and lodging to servicemembers and their families across all Military Departments. The Department now sits as an active turnaround partner in the portfolio, with a live pipeline of project restructures, recapitalizations, and new unaccompanied housing development, each requiring a capital-structure optimization strategy before public funds are committed. JLL serves as the principal advisory team to ODASW(H), providing mission-critical program management and advisory support across the full spectrum of MHPI oversight. On the transactions side, every deliverable — a course-of-action framework, a deal analysis memo, a decision brief for the Deputy Assistant Secretary — moves through a structured five-phase advisory workflow from intake through Congressional notification, and reaches the most senior levels of Department leadership. The precision, strategic clarity, and institutional credibility of our work directly shapes decision-making at the highest levels of the Department.

What your day-to-day will look like:

• Lead the room: convene and run working sessions with project owners, Military Department counterparts, lenders, and the specialist panel — framing the issues, driving the discussion to a position, and carrying that position forward to senior government decision-makers
• Lead course-of-action development for assigned transactions — frame the structuring alternatives (debt restructuring, additional-debt capacity, ground lease modifications, reserve and waterfall mechanics, owner equity and concessions, and new development financing) and drive them to a ranked, defensible recommendation
• Build consensus across a multidisciplinary panel of specialists on the recommended structure, and ensure dissenting alternatives are documented and carried forward to the decision-maker rather than dropped
• Serve as the single point of continuity for each transaction from intake through close
• Support intake and baseline validation with the assigned portfolio advisor — proposal screen, source-document reconciliation, and identification of concession and structuring levers
• Direct the financial modeling team’s sensitivity, pricing, and scoring work against the selected alternatives
• Contribute to the independent downside and risk assessment of the recommended structure
• Own the quality of the decision memo and briefing materials presented to senior government leadership
• Support coordination of the government’s decision with Military Department counterparts and project owners, including Congressional notification
• Capture precedents and lessons learned from closed transactions for reuse across the portfolio

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in finance, real estate, economics, or a related field
• 7+ years of experience in real estate finance, P3/infrastructure, structured finance, or investment banking with demonstrated transaction leadership — you have run deals, not only supported them; exceptional candidates with a compelling record and fewer years will be considered
• Hands-on restructuring, workout, or recapitalization experience: distressed or underperforming assets, lender negotiations, capital structure redesign
• Development finance experience (ground-up or phased construction) is highly valued — the Unaccompanied Housing book includes new construction transactions
• Experience leading multidisciplinary deal teams and specialist advisors — setting direction, sequencing the work, and holding the group to a decision under hard deadlines
• Strong written and verbal communication suited to senior government and institutional audiences, and the presence to hold a position in a room of specialists
• US citizenship required
• Ability to obtain a DoD Secret clearance

Preferred Qualifications :

• Prior secret clearance eligibility
• Federal or public-sector advisory experience, or familiarity with military housing, MHPI, or federal P3 programs, is a meaningful advantage
• Capital markets fluency (debt pricing, sizing, and structuring)
• MBA, JD, or equivalent strongly preferred

Location : Based in or near Washington DC. Remote-eligible; availability for periodic travel to Washington, DC and the Pentagon as program needs require

Extra: Interested candidates should submit a resume. Optionally, candidates may also include a transaction list (deals led, your role, and transaction size) and one writing sample such as a deal memo, decision brief, or equivalent; please note your specific contribution where applicable.