With the sharp increase of the oil price, the issue of the energy saving requires even higher propulsive efficiency of the propellers. Traditionally the propellers have been designed with the criteria such as that of Lerbs optimum based on the lifting line theory and the empirical formulae of Lerbs and van Manen giving relations of the wake pitch with the wake non-uniformity. With the aid of the high speed computer, it is now possible to apply the time-consuming iterative approaches for the solution of the lifting surface problems. In this paper we formulate the variational problem to optimize the efficiency of the propeller operating in the given ship wake using the lifting surface method. The variational formulation relating the spanwise circulation distribution with the propulsive efficiency to be maximized is however non-linear in circulation distribution functions, thus the iterative method is applied to the quasi-linearized equations. The blade shape design also requires the iterative procedures, because the shape of the blade which is represented by the lifting surface is unknown a priori. The numerical code was validated with the DTNSRDC propeller 4119 which is well-known to be optimum in uniform inflow condition. In addition existing (well-designed) commercial propellers were selected and compared with the results of the open water tests and the self-propulsion tests.