Senior Engineering Manager, Marketplace

At Upstart, we’re united by a mission that matters: to radically reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans. Every day, we bring creativity, experimentation, and advanced AI to reshape access to credit, helping millions move forward financially with clarity and confidence. As the leading AI lending marketplace, we partner with banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit through technology that’s both radically intelligent and deeply human. Our platform runs over one million predictions per borrower using more than 1,800 signals, powering smarter, fairer decisions for millions of customers.

We’re proudly digital-first, giving most Upstarters the flexibility to do their best work from wherever they thrive, alongside teammates across 80+ cities in the US and Canada. Digital-first doesn’t mean distant. We’re intentional about in-person connection through team onsites, planning sessions, and moments that spark creativity and trust. Whether you choose to work primarily from home or collaborate in-person from one of our offices in Columbus, Austin, the Bay Area, or New York City (opening Summer 2026), you’ll have the support to work in the way that works best for you.

About the role

The Marketplace Optimization team is responsible for optimizing market-level outcomes, balancing tradeoffs for borrowers, capital providers, and Upstart. The team builds the dynamic policy levers, matching and offer-selection logic, and monetization tooling that clear the marketplace, manage margins, and maximize capital utilization efficiency. Our mandate is to enable automated, data-driven decisions that improve originations, contribution margin, and capital efficiency while supporting new products and partner integrations.

As the Senior Engineering Manager on the team for Marketplace Optimization, you will lead high-impact engineering squads that turn marketplace strategy and ML-backed signals into reliable production systems. You’ll partner closely with Product, Machine Learning, and Capital Markets to deliver scalable capital routing, matching, and monetization automation capabilities that directly affect borrower outcomes and capital performance. You will set execution priorities, remove blockers, and develop engineers to ship production-grade services that are observable, performant, and safe for a regulated fintech environment.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the team’s technical roadmap: deliver matching, offer-selection, monetization, and target-return logic and features that improve marketplace outcomes
• Build and grow a high-performing engineering team: hire, mentor, and develop engineers and ICs; establish clear expectations and career growth paths
• Drive technical excellence: own architecture and delivery decisions for scalable, fault-tolerant services, data pipelines, and APIs that integrate with ML models and capital systems
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, ML, Capital Markets, and Risk to translate business goals into prioritized, measurable engineering work
• Own operational reliability and observability: establish SLOs/SLIs, alerting, runbooks, and post-incident practices to ensure marketplace integrity and fast incident response
• Lead delivery and execution: unblock teams, manage technical and organizational risks, and ensure high-quality, timely releases while balancing speed and safety

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, or a related field (or its equivalent) + 8 years of experience, including at least 3 years of direct people management experience
• Proven success leading and scaling high-performing engineering teams (e.g., growing headcount, improving delivery metrics, or managing multiple squads)
• Demonstrated domain expertise in marketplace optimization, pricing/fee/monetization, or routing systems at scale
• Demonstrated ability to partner closely with Product and ML teams to deploy models at scale and build scalable production-ready systems
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong analytical, organizational, and strategic thinking skills with a bias for action

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization and orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes), and scalable API design
• Experience with streaming and event architectures (e.g., Kafka, Pub/Sub) and modern data platforms
• Track record operating in regulated or compliance-sensitive environments and building systems that support auditability
• Background in statistics, economics, or applied ML domains
• Demonstrated success building observability and reliability practices (SLO/SLI design, monitoring, alerting, post-incident process) and scaling engineering processes across multiple teams

Schedule

This team operates across all U.S. time zones. The majority of your work can be accomplished remotely, with most employees living and working anywhere in the U.S. In-person collaboration occurs via regular onsites, typically once or twice per quarter for 2-4 consecutive days at a time.

Pay

Your base pay will depend on geographic location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Upstart uses compensation regions that vary by location.

• United States | Remote: $186,100 - $257,500 USD
• Canada | Remote: $182,800 - $230,000 CAD

In addition to base pay, Upstart provides target bonuses, equity compensation, and a generous benefits package.

Benefits

• Retirement benefits: 401(k) or Group Retirement Savings Plan with a company match of $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 annually (USD in the US, CAD in Canada)
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with discounted stock purchase options (US only)
• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources (US and supplemental for Canada)
• Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart for eligible plans (US only)
• Income protection: life insurance and disability coverage
• Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays
• Paid family and parental leave (duration varies by country)
• Family-centered benefits: fertility, parenthood, and caregiving support
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental health and life-centered resources
• Financial wellness resources, including financial planning tools and a financial concierge service (US only)
• Annual wellness allowance for physical, emotional, and personal development
• Annual productivity allowance for work-related tools and resources
• Connection and community: team events, all-company updates, and employee resource groups (ERGs)
• Onsite perks: catered lunches and fully stocked micro-kitchens in offices (Bay Area, Austin, Columbus, and New York City)