Upstart is a leading AI lending marketplace dedicated to reducing the cost and complexity of borrowing for Americans. The Senior Software Engineer will be responsible for designing and maintaining backend services and data pipelines that ensure accurate reporting for capital partners, directly supporting the flow of capital through Upstart’s marketplace.
Responsibilities:
- Design and evolve backend services, data models, and reporting APIs that power partner-facing reporting across multiple lending products
- Build and maintain data pipelines and reporting systems that deliver accurate, timely loan and portfolio data under strict SLAs
- Improve system reliability and operational health by reducing incidents, automating manual processes, and strengthening observability
- Lead design and implementation of cross-product platform capabilities, including unified APIs and portals
- Partner with Capital Markets, Finance, and Data teams to define requirements, troubleshoot production issues, and deliver scalable solutions
- Identify structural inefficiencies in legacy systems and drive platform-level improvements that reduce operational burden
- Mentor engineers on best practices for data modeling, distributed systems design, and production operations in a regulated fintech environment
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience) plus 4+ years of experience building and operating backend systems
- Experience with at least one modern backend stack (e.g., Ruby on Rails, Java, or similar) and relational databases (SQL)
- Hands-on experience with data pipelines or analytical data stores, such as Airflow, Spark, dbt, ClickHouse / Snowflake / BigQuery / Redshift, or equivalent technologies
- Experience owning systems end-to-end, including design, deployment, monitoring, and on-call support
- Experience in fintech, lending, capital markets, or financial reporting environments with high data accuracy requirements
- Knowledge of modern data platforms and analytics tools (e.g., Databricks, ClickHouse, Looker, dbt)
- Experience designing and maintaining external APIs (REST) or file-based data integrations for enterprise partners
- Ability to improve system reliability through observability, automation, and incident reduction practices
- Ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical teams to define requirements and deliver solutions