Senior Manager

About Upstart
At Upstart, our mission is to radically reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans. We utilize creativity, experimentation, and advanced AI to reshape access to credit, empowering millions to achieve financial progress with clarity and confidence. As the premier AI lending marketplace, we collaborate with banks and credit unions to broaden access to affordable credit through our innovative technology. Our platform processes over one million predictions per borrower, using more than 1,800 signals to drive smarter, fairer decisions for millions of customers. Every contribution helps us move closer to a world where financial progress is unhindered by credit barriers.

We operate with a digital-first approach, offering flexibility for employees to work from wherever they thrive, connecting with colleagues across 80+ cities in the US and Canada. While digital-first, we foster intentional in-person connections through team onsites and planning sessions. Whether you work primarily from home or collaborate from our offices in Columbus, Austin, the Bay Area, or New York City (opening Summer 2026), we provide the support you need to work effectively.

If you are energized by meaningful challenges, driven to innovate with purpose, and motivated by impactful work, we encourage you to join us.

The Team
Our Core ML organization is seeking an exceptional, hands-on Machine Learning Manager to join our leadership team. As our ML teams share common codebases and modeling pipelines, we are looking for generalist ML leaders who can be deployed to areas of the business where they can make the greatest impact. We match candidates to teams based on their unique backgrounds, technical strengths, and interests.

Depending on your expertise, you could lead high-priority teams such as:

• Cash Line: Lead 0→1 ML innovation for our new subscription-based line of credit, developing core underwriting and customer behavior models (churn, draw, default) in a domain with limited data and long feedback loops.
• Auto Retail Lending (ARL): Address complex modeling challenges in dealership-based auto lending, including competing risk, collateral, and recovery modeling.
• Underwriting: Manage MLE-heavy engineering and research initiatives to optimize our core unsecured personal loan models.

This role is a highly technical player-coach position. You will lead a small, nimble team of individual contributors (Research Scientists, Data Scientists, or Machine Learning Engineers), focusing on strategic scope with a roughly 50/50 split between technical execution and management. You will serve as the definitive ML owner for your product space.

How you'll make an impact:

• Act as a Player-Coach: Deeply engage with data and code, making direct technical contributions, reviewing code/PRs, and understanding model nuances.
• Lead Strategic Initiatives: Own a specific product area and act as the de facto ML leader in cross-functional strategy meetings.
• Drive 0→1 and Scaling ML Efforts: Build new capabilities from scratch or optimize highly mature models at massive scale.
• Translate Models to Business Impact: Design and refine decision engines that convert model predictions into accurate, transparent, and customer-friendly lending outcomes.

What we're looking for:

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience: 6+ years of experience developing and deploying production ML models with direct business impact. Proven track record of leading high-impact ML initiatives from research to production.
• Education: Advanced degree in a quantitative field (e.g., computer science, statistics, economics, operations research, etc.).
• Technical abilities and attitude: Strong technical judgment for model design, data analysis, and evaluation. Keen statistical, economic, and business intuition, comfortable reasoning under uncertainty and data limitations. Knowledge of production ML, ability to adapt to new tech stacks, and willingness to dive into team's work output. Excited and able to make direct technical contributions.
• Leadership: Exceptional leadership skills with experience developing highly technical ML scientists. Ability to attract, mentor, and grow a top-tier ML team. Proven ability to influence and collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Capital Markets, and other teams. Strong project management skills with experience scaling processes and operational workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, or a related field.
• Proven success building and scaling new ML products from inception.
• Familiarity with lending, lines of credit, or other consumer finance products.
• Hands-on familiarity with end-to-end ML infrastructure, including experimentation pipelines, feature stores, and model monitoring.
• Ability to uplevel team’s engineering practices and drive cross-functional engineering design.

Position Location - This role is available in the following locations: US Remote

Time Zone Requirements - This team operates on the East/West Coast time zones.

Travel Requirements - Regular on-site collaboration sessions (3-4 days per quarter) at one of our offices. Upstart covers all travel expenses for these meetups.

Compensation & Benefits (US)

The anticipated base salary for this position in the United States is within the range of $238,400 - $330,200 USD. Actual base pay depends on geographic location, job-related skills, experience, and education. This role also includes target bonuses, equity compensation, and benefits.

Benefits include:

• Competitive compensation: base pay, bonus opportunities, and annual equity grants.
• Retirement benefits: 401(k) with a company match of $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 annually.
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with discounted stock purchase options.
• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions.
• Income protection: life insurance and disability coverage.
• Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays.
• Paid family and parental leave.
• Family-centered benefits: fertility, parenthood, and caregiving support.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental health and life resources.
• Financial wellness resources.
• Annual wellness allowance.
• Annual productivity allowance.
• Connection and community through team events and ERGs.
• Onsite perks at offices: catered lunches and micro-kitchens.

Compensation & Benefits (Canada)

The anticipated base salary for this position in Canada is within the range of $220,200 - $277,000 CAD. Actual base pay depends on geographic location, job-related skills, experience, and education. This role also includes target bonuses, equity compensation, and benefits.

Benefits include:

• Competitive compensation: base pay, bonus opportunities, and annual equity grants.
• Retirement benefits: Group Retirement Savings Plan with a company match of $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 annually.
• Supplemental health coverage.
• Income protection: life insurance and disability coverage.
• Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays.
• Paid family and parental leave.
• Family-centered benefits: fertility, parenthood, and caregiving support.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental health and life resources.
• Annual wellness allowance.
• Annual productivity allowance.
• Connection and community through team events and ERGs.
• Onsite perks at offices: catered lunches and micro-kitchens.

Please note: We are not currently able to hire in Quebec, Canada.

Upstart is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to inclusive and fair hiring practices.

For reasonable accommodation requests, please email candidate_accommodations@upstart.com.

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