Upstart is looking to solve the problem of ensuring data is discoverable, trustworthy, and actionable across the company by building and operating tools, frameworks, and scalable data infrastructure. The goal is to empower various technical teams with high-quality data products and developer tools for efficient data transformation, governance, and operationalization.
Requirements
- Strong technical foundation in SQL, Python, and modern data platforms (Databricks, Spark, Kafka, Alation, Airflow, dbt, cloud data warehouses).
- Experience with data curation and governance practices, including metadata management, data catalogs, and access control.
- Hands-on experience applying AI/LLM technologies to data management, discovery, or automation use cases (e.g., automated metadata generation, natural language data discovery, or agentic AI integrations).
- Proven ability to define roadmaps, drive technical execution, and deliver business impact through data infrastructure.
- Strong knowledge of Lakehouse architecture, and big data processing frameworks.
- Familiarity with DevOps and infrastructure-as-code practices (Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD).
- Experience deploying LLM-powered solutions in production (e.g., metadata enrichment, natural language data discovery, AI-assisted developer tools) and integrating them with enterprise data catalogs such as Alation.
Responsibilities
- Recruit, develop, and manage a high-performing team of data platform engineers focused on data curation, governance, and developer tooling.
- Define and execute the strategic roadmap for data curation, including metadata management, cataloging, self-serve ETL frameworks, and data quality initiatives.
- Ensure delivery of tools and frameworks that enable stakeholders across analytics, ML, and product teams to discover, transform, and operationalize data efficiently.
- Collaborate with Analytics, Machine Learning, Finance, and Product Engineering to align priorities and integrate data platform capabilities into broader company objectives.
- Establish best practices for platform reliability, observability, documentation, governance, and security.
- Drive adoption of these standards across the organization.
- Monitor emerging technologies and industry best practices to keep Upstart’s data ecosystem modern, scalable, and developer-friendly.
Other
- 8+ years of experience in Data Engineering, or Data Platform development, with at least 3 years in people management.
- Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and collaboration skills.
- Demonstrated track record of mentoring and developing engineers while fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture.
- Experience managing data platform or infrastructure teams in high-growth consumer tech or fintech environments.
- Ability to translate complex technical concepts into business value and influence cross-functional strategies.
