About Upstart
Upstart is the leading AI lending marketplace partnering with banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit. By leveraging Upstart's AI marketplace, Upstart-powered banks and credit unions can have higher approval rates and lower loss rates across races, ages, and genders, while simultaneously delivering the exceptional digital-first lending experience their customers demand. More than 80% of borrowers are approved instantly, with zero documentation to upload.
Upstart is a digital-first company, which means that most Upstarters live and work anywhere in the United States. However, we also have offices in San Mateo, California; Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; and New York City, NY (opening Summer 2026).
Most Upstarters join us because they connect with our mission of enabling access to effortless credit based on true risk. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Upstart, we’d love to hear from you!
Recurring Credit is one of Upstart’s most ambitious new product bets: a mobile-first line of credit designed to replace payday loans, cash advance apps, and subprime credit cards with something safer and more sustainable. The team is small, senior, and moving quickly—structured more like a startup inside Upstart than a traditional squad. We’re building both a new product and a new model for how engineering teams can operate in an AI-native way: lean, fast, and deeply focused on outcomes for underserved consumers.
How you’ll make an impact:- 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.
What we’re looking for:
Minimum 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#, 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.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain complex systems and tradeoffs clearly.
Preferred qualifications:
- 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.
- Familiarity with schema evolution and contracts (e.g., Protobuf, Avro) and safe data migrations in distributed systems.
- Track record of building or scaling consumer-facing flows with measurable impact on conversion or reliability.
- 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.
- Demonstrated interest in agentic or AI-assisted systems, applying LLMs to design, testing, analysis, or automation.
- Competitive Compensation (base + bonus & equity)
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart
- Generous 401(k) plan with Upstart matching $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 per year
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
- Life and disability insurance
- Generous holiday, vacation, sick and safety leave
- Supportive parental, family care, and military leave programs
- Annual wellness, technology & ergonomic reimbursement programs
- Social activities including team events and onsites, all-company updates, employee resource groups (ERGs), and other interest groups such as book clubs, fitness, investing, and volunteering
- Catered lunches + snacks & drinks when working in offices
Position Location - This role is available in the following locations: Remote, San Mateo, Columbus, Austin
Time Zone Requirements - This team operates across all U.S. time zones.
Travel Requirements - This team has regular on-site collaboration sessions. These occur 3 days per quarter at an Upstart office. If you need to travel to make these meetups, Upstart will cover all travel related expenses.
#LI-REMOTE
#LI-MidSenior
At Upstart, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package. The anticipated base salary for this position is expected to be within the below range. Your actual base pay will depend on your geographic location–with our “digital first” philosophy, Upstart uses compensation regions that vary depending on location. Individual pay is also determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.
In addition, Upstart provides employees with target bonuses, equity compensation, and generous benefits packages (including medical, dental, vision, and 401k).
Upstart is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. Just as we are dedicated to improving access to affordable credit for all, we are committed to inclusive and fair hiring practices.
If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please email [email protected]
https://www.upstart.com/candidate_privacy_policy
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