Building a career at Walker & Dunlop

Building a successful career takes more than ambition. It takes the right path and the right company to help you grow.

For professionals exploring commercial real estate careers or CRE finance jobs, where building your career matters just as much as the role.

At Walker & Dunlop, we’ve grown into one of the largest commercial real estate finance and advisory firms in the United States and internationally. I’m proud of what we’ve built, but as Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO), I care just as much about how we grow. That means investing in our people as deliberately as we invest in our platform so every W&Der can develop new skills, do great work, and take pride in their career.

There is no single program or benefit that creates that kind of workplace. It comes from our values that inform the choices we make every day about how we support our people. Here are a few ways that showup at W&D.

Giving people better tools

The commercial real estate finance industry is evolving rapidly. Data, technology, and capital markets are more interconnected than ever, and we want our people to have the tools to keep learning and working smarter as the industry evolves.

When it comes to AI, our philosophy is simple: The future is not Human or AI; it’s Human and AI. That’s why we provide enterprise access to AI tools and encourage thoughtful, responsible adoption across the company. We want our employees to experiment, ask questions, and discover practical ways to put these tools to work in order to analyze information faster, solve problems more effectively, work with greater precision, and ultimately deliver greater value to our clients.

Walker & Dunlop is a people business first. We invest in innovation to accelerate our employees’ careers and drive growth for our clients. We believe technology should elevate our people, strengthen decision-making, and create more time for meaningful work, not replace the judgment, creativity, and relationships at the heart of our business.

Supporting wellness and life outside of work

High performance is critical to building a successful career in commercial real estate.

Sustained high performance requires energy and resilience because CRE work is demanding and life rarely pauses to accommodate it.

That is why we believe in caring for our people as whole human beings – not just employees – through every part of their personal and professional journeys.

For us, wellness starts with a simple idea: taking care of yourself enables you to show up fully for your team, your clients, and the people who matter most.

Our benefits reflect this belief. They include a wellness reimbursement of up to $150 per month, as well as fertility, hormonal health, and family-forming support with reimbursement of up to $15,000 per benefit, twice per employee. We also provide parental leave; comprehensive medical, dental, and disability coverage; and an employee assistance program.

Benefits cannot anticipate every season of your life, but they can give you meaningful support when you need it so you can be at your best both inside and outside the office.

Rewarding exceptional work

At Walker & Dunlop, we believe employees should share not only in the work required to build a successful company, but also in the rewards that success creates, and we reward performance accordingly, both individually and collectively. Many of our employees are eligible for bonuses and promotions each year, and most W&Ders recently received stock grants valued at $10,000 each in celebration of W&D’s 15th anniversary of our initial public offering. This was our broadest equity award in company history.

While compensation, annual bonuses, and promotions are important ways employees share in the company's success, we also believe meaningful recognition should occur throughout the year and be tied to the behaviors and values that define our culture, the Walker Way. This includes spot bonuses of up to $2,000 and quarterly awards of $5,000.

For professionals exploring CRE roles, it’s a meaningful signal: when your work moves our business and our culture forward, it’s recognized and rewarded. When everyone does the same, we all win.

Recognizing commitment over time

Many firms talk about growth. We plan for it.

We want people to see a future for themselves at Walker & Dunlop with opportunities to grow, contribute, and build meaningful careers here.

Paid time off increases with tenure. Federal holidays and flexible floating holidays are built into our policies. Service milestones are recognized with meaningful awards, including additional PTO and money towards travel experiences at major anniversaries, ranging from $2,000 to $25,000 based on years of service. These service awards honor more than tenure; they celebrate deals closed, challenges navigated, teams built, clients served, and community strengthened.

A long career is built over years of learning, relationships, hard work, and contributions that do not always fit neatly on a resume. Those moments and our collective longevity are worth celebrating. They reflect the stability of our platform and our commitment to retaining top talent in CRE.

For CRE professionals, this means when you build your career at Walker & Dunlop, you are building it on a firm foundation.

Keeping the conversation open

One of the things I care deeply about as CHRO is making sure communication goes both ways and is as transparent as possible. Employees should hear directly from leadership about where we are headed and how the company is performing, and leaders need to hear what employees are experiencing in real time.

Our executive town halls, quarterly all-company meetings, and other companywide gatherings create opportunities for employees to hear from leaders about our strategy, priorities, and performance. Our quarterly employee engagement surveys give our people another way to tell us what is working, where we can improve, and what they need from us.

We won’t always get it right. What matters is that we keep listening, keep communicating, and use what we hear to make Walker & Dunlop a better place to work for everyone.

This level of commitment and engagement drives trust and alignment across teams, enabling us to operate with greater speed and clarity, which strengthens our ability to serve clients and accelerate careers.

A platform built for commercial real estate careers

Walker & Dunlop’s mission is to use ideas and capital to create communities where people live, work, shop, and play.

Delivering on that mission requires experts across commercial real estate finance, investment sales, advisory, valuation, and capital markets. It requires driven professionals who want to build careers in a firm that values insight, collaboration, and tenacity: people who are willing to learn from one another and work toward something bigger than their individual roles.

We invest in our people because our people power our results.

Build your commercial real estate career with us

Our teams span commercial real estate finance, investment sales, advisory, valuation, capital markets, and the many functions that enable them. There are many different career paths here, but the people who thrive at Walker & Dunlop tend to share a few things: curiosity, a willingness to collaborate, and a desire to take ownership of their work.

When I think about the kind of workplace we are trying to build, I do not start with a list of perks. I think about whether people have the tools to do their jobs well, feel supported through different stages of life, know their contributions matter, can speak up and be heard, and can see a future here.

We are not perfect, and our culture work will never be finished. But we care deeply about creating a place where talented people can do meaningful work, grow over time, and be proud of their team. Walker & Dunlop offers more than a role. We offer a platform for building a lasting career in commercial real estate.

If that sounds like the kind of place where you would like to build your career, I hope you will explore our current opportunities and discover where your expertise can help advance our company and our culture.