Machine Learning Engineer

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!

This team is focused on leveraging machine learning to power Upstart’s underwriting models. It is responsible for building the underwriting model which determines credit decisioning s model plays a central role in Upstart’s overall performance as a company and includes numerous challenging problems to solve.

As a Machine Learning Engineer, PL UW at Upstart, you will collaborate with our Research Scientists, Data Scientists, and other engineering departments. Your work will impact the team in a number of ways:

• You will increase ML productivity through better software and infrastructure; and improve how we research, train, deploy, serve and monitor our models.
• You will reduce the time it takes to go from idea to production, and enable us to test out new ideas. This will all manifest in us delivering on our critical mission of enabling access to credit more effectively.
• You will design and implement code and algorithms to help improve our model’s predictive power.

Upstart’s Growth Team engages in marketing and borrower acquisition through direct mail (DM) campaigns and targeted loan offers on partner sites, leveraging machine learning to drive growth. The Growth ML team develops models to optimize borrower targeting, predict conversion probabilities, and refine pricing strategies across these channels. Our team has an outsized impact on Upstart’s success – the majority of the loans we originate can be directly attributed to the growth team’s efforts.

The Growth ML organization is currently growing rapidly and expanding our scope into new problem spaces.

• Build repeatable workflows and automation that enables scientists to spend more time on high leverage tasks (methodology, writing, analysis) and less on keeping the lights on or getting things to run.
• Discover and develop a short and long-term roadmap of engineering improvements on the PL UW team.
• Explore new algorithms and methodologies for our machine learning models.
• Interface cross-functionally with other engineering teams (data engineering, machine learning platform, pricing, and growth software engineering), to provide feedback and requirements, so that we can build high-quality systems end-to-end.

• Education and Experience
  • PhD in a quantitative field with 0+ years of relevant experience.
  • Master’s in a quantitative field with 2+ years of relevant experience.
  • Bachelor’s in a quantitative field with 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience in Python.
• Experience with Machine Learning.

This role is available in the following location:
Remote.

As a digital first company, the majority of your work can be accomplished remotely. The majority of our employees can live and work anywhere in the U.S but are encouraged to still spend high quality time in-person collaborating via regular onsite. 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.

• Competitive Compensation (base + bonus & equity)
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart
• 401(k) with 100%…