Upstart is looking to solve the business and technical problem of delivering a seamless and reliable payment experience for borrowers, which is a critical part of Upstart's financial ecosystem. The company aims to scale its platform to support new products, payment types, and borrower volumes, requiring leaders who can drive architectural clarity, foster high-performing teams, and build systems that balance speed, reliability, and compliance.
Requirements
- Deep technical expertise in distributed systems, APIs, and systems design.
- Experience integrating with external payment networks and building highly reliable payment systems.
- Familiarity with data consistency models, reconciliation workflows, and transaction observability.
- Systems thinker with a bias for action—capable of moving quickly while maintaining compliance and quality.
- Proven ability to lead platform migration or modernization efforts while minimizing risk.
Responsibilities
- Define and execute the long-term technical strategy for borrower payments and servicing infrastructure.
- Lead multi-quarter, cross-functional initiatives that improve borrower outcomes and payment success rates.
- Build and scale engineering teams with a strong culture of ownership, execution, and operational excellence.
- Deliver platform improvements that enhance reliability, reduce latency, and increase payment success.
- Connect engineering work directly to business and borrower outcomes, enabling measurable improvements in financial performance.
- Create processes and systems that scale with growing borrower volume, product complexity, and compliance requirements.
- Establish clear technical and delivery visibility across squads, ensuring high confidence in roadmap execution.
Other
- 10–15 years of software engineering experience, with 4–7 years in engineering management roles.
- Proven experience leading teams in regulated domains such as fintech, payments, or lending.
- Demonstrated ability to define and deliver complex technical strategies that align with business goals.
- Strong track record of building high-performing teams and mentoring engineering leaders.
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Experience working in consumer-facing domains with a strong empathy for user experience.
- The majority of our employees can live and work anywhere in the U.S but are encouraged to to still spend high quality time in-person collaborating via regular onsites. The in-person sessions’ cadence varies depending on the team and role; most teams meet once or twice per quarter for 2-4 consecutive days at a time.
