Manager, Machine Learning

The Team and Role

Upstart’s Machine Learning team has a direct impact on our company's success. The team consists of full-stack applied science generalists as well as specialists in research, data science, statistical modeling and machine learning. The fundamental goal of the Machine Learning team is to explore new models and new data sets that can improve the accuracy of our models. With this goal comes near-limitless challenges to tackle, and that is one of the reasons why Upstart is such a unique opportunity.

As Manager of Machine Learning, you will lead a team of 2 research scientists and a data scientist on our Small Dollar Lending product, an unsecured personal lending product for small, short-term loans.  The team focuses on modeling credit risk and operational costs, and making corresponding underwriting and pricing decisions.

• Position Location - This role is available in the following locations: Columbus, Austin, San Mateo, or Remote
  
  
• Time Zone Requirements - This team operates on either the East or West Coast time zones.
  
  
• Travel Requirements - This team has regular on-site collaboration sessions. ML Managers can anticipate working in either HQ 3 days/week 6 times/year. Since this is a leadership position, a few additional travel dates may be possible for onsite collaborations with other teams. If you need to travel to make these meetups, Upstart will cover all travel related expenses.

How you’ll make an impact:

• Lead your team to apply state-of-the-art machine learning methods (e.g. recurrent neural networks, gradient boosting methods for survival time prediction, model ensembling and stacking) to a critical prediction problem (credit risk) where machine learning is not widely applied and the optimal solutions are not known.
• Search for new variables, either internal to Upstart, or from external vendors, that can improve our underwriting models’ performance.
• Work with the Small Dollar Lending team to identify opportunities for new ML models to be used in credit decisioning.
• Along with your team, assume responsibility for the performance of Upstart’s loan originations for the Small Dollar Lending product.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in quantitative area of study
• 1+ years as a data science or machine learning people manager or tech lead
• Understanding of machine learning models and statistical methods
• Coding proficiency, preferably in Python
• Excellent quantitative critical thinking skills

Preferred qualifications:

• Advanced degree in quantitative area of study such as statistics, operations research, finance, mathematics, or related field
• Prior experience managing teams that build machine learning models, prepare them for production, and make large, direct contributions to a business’ profitability
• Consumer lending knowledge and/or experience within an ML-centric technology company is a plus

What you'll love: 

• 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

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