Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Machine Learning Explainability

About Upstart

Upstart is a leading AI lending marketplace partnering with banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit. By leveraging Upstart's AI marketplace, Upstart-powered banks and credit unions can have higher approval rates and lower loss rates across races, ages, and genders, while simultaneously delivering the exceptional digital-first lending experience their customers demand. More than two-thirds of Upstart loans are approved instantly and are fully automated.

Upstart is a digital-first company, which means that most Upstarters live and work anywhere in the United States. However, we also have offices in San Mateo, California; Columbus, Ohio; and Austin, Texas.

Most Upstarters join us because they connect with our mission of enabling access to effortless credit based on true risk. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Upstart, we’d love to hear from you!

The Team

Upstart’s ML Explainability team is focused on research and development related to machine learning and artificial intelligence explainability. This includes researching and developing the methodology behind how we explain model-based credit decisions. This function is essential for Upstart to ensure that our models are compliant, robust, and are able to engender trust with a variety of external stakeholders, including lending partners, investors, and consumers.

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer on our team at Upstart, you will be an integral part of the Explainability team ensuring fair lending compliance of model-based decisions on the platform. You will influence and implement the team’s long term vision for systems generating model explanations at Upstart including but not limited to: increasing productivity through better software and infrastructure, automating model training, building efficient interfaces for internal and external parties to interact with and understand our models, developing a robust model monitoring protocol, and ensuring coding best practices.

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

Travel Requirements - This team has regular on-site collaboration sessions. These occur 3 days per quarter at the an Upstart office. If you need to travel to make these meetups, Upstart will cover all travel related expenses.

How you’ll make an impact:

• Build repeatable workflows and automation that enables faster and more flexible model updates and research flows
• Define and enforce best engineering practices across the team, helping scientists uplevel their technical skills
• Discover and develop a short and long-term roadmap of engineering improvements on the explainability team
• Interface cross-functionally with other engineering teams (data engineering, machine learning platform, pricing, and growth software engineering), to provide feedback and requirements, so that we can build high-quality systems end-to-end
• Build, maintain, and improve methodologies and  tooling for interacting with and understanding model decisions across Upstart’s platform. 

What we’re looking for: 

• Minimum qualifications:
  • Bachelors with 4+years of software engineering experience in ML or ML-adjacent teams
  • Experienced and proficient in Python programming
  • Experience working with most of the following technologies: machine learning libraries such as numpy, pandas and sklearn; orchestration tools; public cloud infrastructure; containers; backend programming languages
• Preferred qualifications:
  
  • Master’s Degree in Computer Science or quantitative field
  • Experience working as a software engineer in collaboration with machine learning teams
  • Working knowledge of common ML methods such as regression, boosting, and general predictive modeling. 
  • Experience working in the fintech industry
  • Experience working with AI/ML Explainability techniques

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

#LI-REMOTE

#LI-MidSenior

At Upstart, your base pay is one part of your total compensation package.  The anticipated base salary for this position is expected to be within the below range. Your actual base pay will depend on your geographic location–with our “digital first” philosophy, Upstart uses compensation regions that vary depending on location. Individual pay is also determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

In addition, Upstart provides employees with target bonuses, equity compensation, and generous benefits packages (including medical, dental, vision, and 401k).

United States | Remote - Anticipated Base Salary Range$141,300—$195,500 USD

Upstart is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to ensuring that underrepresented classes receive better access to affordable credit, and are just as committed to embracing diversity and inclusion in our hiring practices. We celebrate all cultures, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences, and know that we can only become better together. 

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please email candidate_accommodations@upstart.com

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