Upstart

Principal Software Engineer, Unsecured Installments

United States | Remote · Principal

Sponsorship not specified$195k-$270kDetected 12 days ago

PythonJavaC#RubyKotlinDistributed SystemsAPI DevelopmentMachine LearningSparkLLMsA/B TestingProduct StrategyCommunicationCollaborationAdaptabilityUnderwriting

About the role

Every day, we bring creativity, experimentation, and advanced AI to reshape access to credit, helping millions move forward financially with clarity and confidence.
But the numbers only hint at the impact.
Every idea, every voice, and every contribution moves us closer to a world where credit never stands between people and their financial progress.

Responsibilities

Design and evolve the core backend systems that power Upstart's unsecured installment lending product.
Lead architecture and technical direction across complex domains such as underwriting, pricing, offer generation, funding, servicing, and borrower lifecycle workflows.
Improve the systems and services behind key borrower and partner flows, including experimentation, repricing, and moments of borrower friction.
Raise the bar for engineering quality through strong API design, thoughtful domain modeling, observability, testing, and operational excellence.
Mentor other engineers and serve as a technical leader who can bring clarity, drive alignment, and help teams execute through ambiguity.
Contribute to how the team uses AI in development workflows and product capabilities, with a pragmatic view of where it can create meaningful leverage.
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.
The team owns critical parts of the borrower journey across offer generation, pricing, underwriting, funding, and borrower experience, while working closely with the broader lending platform that powers Upstart at scale.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience) and 8+ years of software engineering experience.
Strong experience designing distributed systems and event-driven architectures, including real-world handling of retries, idempotency, fault tolerance, and failure modes.
Proficiency in an object-oriented language such as Python, Java, Kotlin, C#, or Ruby, with deep experience building APIs and service-oriented backend systems.
Ability to work effectively in ambiguous environments where product requirements, operating constraints, and system boundaries evolve over time.
Experience influencing technical direction beyond a single team, including driving alignment across engineers with different priorities and constraints.
Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain complex tradeoffs and advocate for high-impact solutions.

Nice to have

Experience in fintech, lending, payments, or other regulated financial systems.
Familiarity with unsecured installment lending, offer and pricing systems, borrower acquisition flows, funding, or servicing platforms.
Experience operating as a technical leader on small or midsized teams with broad product ownership.
Hands-on experience leveraging generative AI in product features or internal engineering workflows.
Time Zone Requirements - This team operates across all U.S. time zones.
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-MidSenior --> use for L5, L6

Compensation

At Upstart, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package.

Benefits

This team works on complex, high-leverage problems at the intersection of software, machine learning, economics, and compliance.
Recent work has focused on improving borrower flows, repricing and rate flexibility, partnership experiences, and the technical health of the platform.
You'll partner closely with product, machine learning, analytics, compliance, and other engineering teams to build systems that are reliable, scalable, and adaptable as the product continues to evolve.

Company info

Unsecured Installments is one of Upstart's core lending products, helping borrowers access credit through a seamless, digitally native experience.
We operate in a high-ownership environment where engineering plays a direct role in shaping product strategy, credit outcomes, and platform evolution.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll help define the technical direction for a broad and business-critical surface area.
Our platform runs over one million predictions per borrower using more than 1,800 signals, powering smarter, fairer decisions for millions of customers.

Apply directly at Upstart →Create a free account for alerts like this View Upstart immigration profile

This listing is sourced directly from Upstart's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.