Senior Software Engineer, Unsecured Installments
Remote · United States · 6+ years experience · Remote · Posted Oct 14, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 6+ years experience
- Workplace
- Remote
- Location
- Remote · United States
About Upstart
- 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 3,000 signals, powering smarter, fairer decisions for millions of customers. 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.
- 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. And 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, you’ll have the support to work in the way that works best for you.
- If you’re energized by tackling meaningful problems, excited to innovate with purpose, and motivated by work that truly matters, we’d love to hear from you.
- The Team:
- Unsecured Installments is one of Upstart's core lending products, helping borrowers access credit through a seamless, digitally native experience. 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. Recent work has focused on improving borrower flows, repricing and rate flexibility, partnership experiences, and the overall quality of the customer-facing experience.
About the role
- As a Senior Software Engineer on the Unsecured Installments team, you'll be a technical leader for the frontend and full-stack experiences that borrowers interact with directly.
- Working primarily in React and TypeScript, you'll own the delivery of large, multi-month projects, shape the architecture of the team's mobile-web and full-stack surfaces, and set a high bar for quality across the borrower experience.
Responsibilities
- Own the design and delivery of large, complex backend and full-stack initiatives, from planning and sequencing through launch and long-term maintenance.
- Set technical direction for the team's service architecture, APIs, data models, and system integrations, owning a 3–6 month roadmap and proactively addressing systemic gaps that threaten reliability or team effectiveness.
- Partner closely with product, frontend, design, platform, and other backend engineers to translate roadmap priorities and borrower needs into scalable, high-quality systems.
- Raise the bar for engineering excellence through thoughtful service and API design, data integrity, testing, observability, security, and operational rigor across business-critical lending workflows.
- Lead through ambiguity by breaking down loosely defined problems into clear, testable plans and using data to inform tradeoffs involving scope, scalability, performance, reliability, and customer experience.
- Mentor and grow other engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance, and serve as a trusted collaborator across the team.
- Contribute to how the team uses AI in development workflows and product capabilities, with a pragmatic view of where it can create meaningful leverage.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, and 6+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Deep proficiency designing and building backend services and APIs in a language such as Python, Java, Kotlin, Go, Ruby, or Node.js.
- Strong experience with service architecture, API design, data modeling, relational or non-relational databases, and distributed systems.
- Track record of independently leading the design and delivery of large, business-critical backend or full-stack projects in production.
- Experience building reliable production systems, including testing, monitoring, incident response, performance optimization, and long-term operational ownership.
- Ability to work effectively in ambiguous environments where product requirements, constraints, and system boundaries evolve over time.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical tradeoffs and align product and engineering partners.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience serving as the backend or full-stack technical lead for a product team or business-critical system.
- Experience building consumer-facing products or high-volume transactional systems with strong requirements around reliability, scalability, correctness, and security.
- Background in fintech, lending, payments, or other regulated financial products involving complex workflows and high quality expectations.
- Experience with distributed systems, asynchronous processing, event-driven architectures, or service-oriented architectures.
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, relational and non-relational data stores, messaging systems, and CI/CD workflows.
- Experience with experimentation, feature flagging, or platform capabilities that support iterative product improvements in production.
- Hands-on experience leveraging generative AI in product features or internal engineering workflows.
- Passion for building products that expand access to credit and improve financial outcomes for consumers.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation including base pay, bonus opportunities, and annual equity grants that vest quarterly
- Retirement benefits including 401(k) or Group Retirement Savings Plan 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 for eligible employees (US only)
- Comprehensive health coverage including medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources for US and supplemental health coverage for Canada
- Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart for eligible plans (US only)
- Income protection benefits including life insurance and disability coverage
- Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays
- Paid family and parental leave
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offering mental health support and life-centered resources
- Annual wellness and productivity allowances
Workplace
- Not currently able to hire in Quebec for roles based in Canada
Skills
- React
- TypeScript
- Python
- Java
- Kotlin
- Go
- Ruby
- Node.js
