Senior Engineering Manager, Lending

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; and Austin, Texas.

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!

As a senior engineering manager on the Home Lending team, you’ll grow Upstart’s newest business: home equity line of credit (HELOC). We’re starting a new consumer-facing team to expand our customer base and improve our borrower experience. You’ll be responsible for hiring and building your own team, with room to grow to multiple teams by 2026.

Why home loans? Millions of homeowners are locked into long-term low-interest mortgages and looking for a way to access their equity. By securing a loan against their house, we can lend them fast, affordable credit for remodels, big purchases, or paying off debt. This is a huge category of consumer credit, and it’s where we can make our biggest impact.

Why us? The market has left behind millions of Americans with imperfect credit or difficult-to-document income. Serving these customers is our bread and butter, and it’s core to our mission. Because we use machine learning and automation to assess credit-worthiness, we can offer a faster experience at a better price.

We want our team to reflect the people we’re serving. To serve customers at the fringes, we need people who think at the fringes—weird, quirky, out-of-the-box do-ers who reason from first principles and not from the status quo. We leave our ego at the door and crave being proven wrong. We're a high-empathy team, and we succeed as a team first, individuals second.

• Team leadership
  • Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing engineering team focused on providing high quality solutions and incrementally enhance systems with each pull request.
  • Foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture that promotes innovation, continuous learning, and excellence.
• Technical leadership
  • Oversee the design, development, and implementation of cross functional projects which drive business outcomes.
  • Ensure the reliability, performance, and scalability of customer facing products, leveraging best practices in software engineering.
  • Collaborate with architecture and infrastructure teams to ensure alignment with broader engineering goals.
• Stakeholder communication
  • Partner with general manager, product manager, product designer, engineering leaders across Upstart, legal, operations, analytics, and compliance teams to gather requirements and ensure solutions meet business needs and regulatory standards.
  • Communicate effectively with stakeholders to keep them informed of project status, risks, and opportunities.
• Project management
  • Manage project timelines and resources to deliver high-quality product solutions on time.
  • Implement frameworks to ensure efficient project execution and continuous delivery.

• Minimum requirements:
  • Education and experience
    • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
    • 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 3 years on product-focused engineering teams.
    • 3+ years of management experience.
• Technical skills
  • Strong proficiency in any programming language.
  • Experience with delivering full stack solutions to customers.
  • Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) and microservices architecture.
• Leadership skills
  • Excellent leadership and people management skills, with a track record of building and leading successful…