Senior Engineering Manager, Marketplace Optimization

Upstart•San Mateo, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

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! The Team: Upstart’s 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 Engineering Manager 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.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in an engineering manager role (managing individual contributors and/or managers)
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

Nice To Haves

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

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

Benefits

Competitive Compensation (base + bonus & equity)
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart
401(k) with 100% company match up to $4,500 and immediate vesting and after-tax savings
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