Upstart is looking to solve the problem of limited access to affordable credit by leveraging AI to improve approval rates and reduce loss rates, while providing an exceptional digital-first lending experience. The Recurring Credit team specifically aims to replace predatory lending products like payday loans with a safer, more sustainable mobile-first line of credit.
Requirements
- 4+ years of experience building backend systems in production, ideally powering consumer-facing products.
- Strong technical depth in distributed, event-driven architectures (Kafka, SQS, Kinesis, MQ) including idempotency, retries, DLQs, and ordering.
- Proficiency in an OO language (Java, Kotlin, C-Sharp, Python, Ruby) and comfort with relational databases, caching layers, and API design.
- Demonstrated ability to ship zero-to-one systems or products, making tradeoffs in ambiguous environments.
- A track record of connecting backend work to product outcomes (conversion, reliability, payments, onboarding).
- Experience designing with observability and reliability in mind (metrics, traces, logs, SLOs).
- Active use of AI tools in engineering workflows beyond autocomplete, with curiosity about how AI changes how teams build.
Responsibilities
- Design and build core backend systems that power instant disbursements, subscription billing, and repayment schedules.
- Develop distributed, event-driven services that guarantee reliability and scale—covering retries, ordering, schema evolution, and observability.
- Translate product intent into customer impact by collaborating closely with product and design to ship high-quality user-facing features quickly.
- Leverage AI-native workflows (e.g., Copilot, Cursor, LLM-powered tooling) to accelerate coding, testing, and analysis.
- Ensure trust and transparency at the system level by instrumenting metrics, logs, and traces tied to business and user outcomes.
- Balance speed and quality in a greenfield codebase, helping set the technical direction for a product with zero-to-one momentum and long-term scale.
- Shape engineering culture and velocity through thoughtful APIs, automation, and scalable practices.
Other
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain complex systems and tradeoffs clearly.
- Experience with fintech or payments systems such as disbursements, billing, ledgers, KYC/IDV, or credit/underwriting flows.
- Practical experience with instant funding rails and the challenges of fraud, reconciliation, and compliance.
- Comfort navigating regulated domains and collaborating with legal, servicing, capital markets, or external partners.
- Evidence of tenure and progression within one company (promotions, expanding scope) and resilience through challenging product phases.
