Principal Software Engineer, Pricing Platform

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Establish the overarching technical vision and roadmap for Upstart's pricing platform across the organization.

• Spearhead the architectural development towards modular and reusable platform capabilities spanning various loan products.

• Design and enhance Tier 0/Tier 1 services where critical factors such as latency, throughput, availability, and financial accuracy are essential.

• Collaborate with machine-learning scientists and engineers to define reliable boundaries between models and production pricing systems.

• Balance the needs of engineering, machine learning, and product across different teams.

• Define service, API, configuration, and ownership boundaries among Pricing, Personal Loans, Auto, HELOC, and nearby platform teams.

• Assess runtime and language options, including Python, Kotlin, Rust, and Go.

• Alleviate operational burdens through testing, observability, failure isolation, incident learning, and architecture limiting blast radius.

• Lead technical discussions and foster alignment across Engineering, ML, Product, Data, Security, Compliance, and business stakeholders.

• Engage in design reviews, prototypes, and critical code while mentoring senior technical leaders.

• Prioritize technical debt and platform investments based on business value, risk mitigation, and long-term returns.

• Create scalable, low-latency, and highly reliable services that transform ML underwriting outputs into pricing decisions for various product lines.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, along with 8 or more years of software engineering experience.

• Proven history of establishing architecture and technical direction for large, complex distributed systems utilized by multiple teams or products.

• Extensive backend engineering experience and production proficiency in at least one of the following: Python, Kotlin, or Java.

• Willingness and capability to work effectively within a primarily Python environment.

• Experience in designing or managing Tier 0/Tier 1 services with stringent latency, throughput, availability, and correctness demands.

• Strong comprehension of APIs, service-oriented or modular architectures, containerization, cloud infrastructure like AWS, and maintainable software design.

• Hands-on technical judgment encompassing strategy, architecture, detailed designs, prototypes, debugging, and critical implementation choices.

• Ability to articulate complex systems, constraints, and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Demonstrated success in leading technical decisions across organizations and influencing without direct authority.

• Experience mentoring senior engineers and enhancing the effectiveness and scope of other technical leaders.

• Strong product and business acumen, balancing delivery, reliability, technical debt, risk, and long-term investment needs.

• Preferred: experience with calculation-intensive, real-time decision-making, pricing, marketplace, risk, fraud, payments, trading, auctions, or advertising systems.

• Preferred: experience collaborating with machine-learning teams or scaling production models.

• Preferred: experience modernizing mature or tightly coupled platforms through phased migration.

• Preferred: familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, microservices, event-driven systems, and production observability.

• Preferred: additional production experience with Rust or another performance-centric programming language.

• Preferred: background or applied exposure in statistics, mathematics, economics, econometrics, financial systems, or other quantitative areas.

• Preferred: experience in a rapidly scaling or evolving organization.

• For positions based in Canada, employees must reside outside of Quebec as Upstart is currently unable to hire in Quebec.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including bonus opportunities and annual equity grants that vest quarterly.

• 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 medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources.

• Supplemental health coverage for Canada.

• Contributions to Health Savings Accounts for eligible plans (US only).

• Life insurance and disability coverage.

• Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays.

• Paid family and parental leave.

• Fertility, parenthood, and caregiving benefits.

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offering mental health support and life-centered resources.

• Financial planning tools and financial concierge service (US only).

• Annual wellness allowance.

• Annual productivity allowance for relevant tools and resources.

• Team events, all-company updates, and opportunities to engage with employee resource groups (ERGs).

• Catered lunches and fully stocked micro-kitchens at our offices in the Bay Area, Austin, Columbus, and New York City.