Director of Product, Machine Learning & Decisioning Platforms

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:

Upstart is looking for a Director of Product, Machine Learning & Decisioning Platforms to help us achieve our mission of enabling effortless credit based on true risk. This role will lead the product strategy and team responsible for the platforms that power Upstart’s credit decisioning and machine learning platform capabilities. This is a highly technical, platform-focused product leadership role at the core of Upstart’s business. You will manage and develop a team of experienced product managers, set strategy across multiple interconnected product areas, and partner closely with engineering and machine learning leaders to evolve the systems underlying pricing, underwriting, model deployment, and ML innovation.

The ideal candidate is a strong product leader and coach who can bring structure to complex, ambiguous problems; connect technical decisions to business and customer outcomes; and create alignment across teams. While you will remain close to the product, this role is primarily focused on setting direction, developing talent, and enabling your team to deliver high-impact results.

How you’ll make an impact

Lead, coach, and develop a team of product managers, setting clear priorities and raising the quality of product management across the organization.

Define the product strategy and roadmap for the platforms powering Upstart’s credit decisioning and machine learning capabilities.

Partner with engineering and machine learning leaders to improve model development, versioning, deployment, forecasting, experimentation, and monitoring.

Evolve underwriting and decisioning systems to better connect customer information, model outputs, and business outcomes.

Identify opportunities to apply machine learning across the business, validate them through focused MVPs, and build the strongest opportunities into scalable products.

Create scalable processes for evaluating, onboarding, and integrating data vendors and other ML capabilities.

Balance near-term execution with long-term platform investment, making thoughtful trade-offs across impact, risk, technical complexity, and speed.

Build alignment across teams and ensure machine learning is incorporated into product strategy from the start.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience.

8+ years of product management experience, including experience leading technical or platform products.

Experience managing and developing product managers, ideally across multiple interconnected teams.

Strong technical fluency and experience partnering with engineering, machine learning, and data science teams.

Demonstrated ability to set strategy, navigate ambiguity, and deliver results in a fast-paced environment.

Strong analytical, organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills.