Principal Software Engineer – Core Pricing (Remote)

OhioX; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 195,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Upstart is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Core Pricing team to lead cross-functional pricing platform initiatives and shape the long-term architecture. You will drive scalable, low-latency services that transform ML outputs into pricing decisions across multiple product lines, while partnering with ML, product, and data teams.

You will influence architecture, champion performance, and guide engineers across the company, delivering reliable pricing capabilities as Upstart expands

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field - or equivalent practical experience - plus 8 or more years of software engineering experience.
• A track record of setting architecture and technical direction for large, complex distributed systems used across multiple teams or products.
• Deep backend engineering experience and production proficiency in at least one of Python, Kotlin, or Java; willingness and ability to work effectively in a predominantly Python environment.
• Experience designing or operating Tier 0/Tier 1 services with demanding latency, throughput, availability, and correctness requirements.
• Strong understanding of APIs, service-oriented or modular architectures, containerization, cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS), and maintainable software design.
• Hands-on technical judgment: you can move from strategy and architecture into concrete designs, prototypes, debugging, and critical implementation decisions.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex systems, constraints, and trade-offs to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-organization technical decisions — balancing the needs of engineering, machine learning, and product teams — and influencing without direct authority.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and expanding the effectiveness and scope of other technical leaders.
• Strong product and business judgment, including the ability to balance delivery, reliability, technical debt, risk, and long-term investment.

Responsibilities

• Define the cross-company technical vision and roadmap for Upstart's pricing platform, ensuring alignment across Pricing, Personal Loans, Auto, HELOC, ML, and Product organizations.
• Lead the architectural evolution from tightly coupled, sequential workflows toward modular, reusable platform capabilities across loan products.
• Design and improve Tier 0/Tier 1 services where latency, throughput, availability, and financial correctness are all critical.
• Partner closely with machine-learning scientists and engineers to create reliable, scalable boundaries between models and production pricing systems.
• Balance the sometimes-competing needs of engineering, machine learning, and product teams across organizations, making pragmatic trade-offs that serve Upstart's broader technical and business strategy.
• Clarify service, API, configuration, and ownership boundaries across Pricing, Personal Loans, Auto, HELOC, and adjacent platform teams.
• Evaluate runtime and language choices pragmatically, including where Python, Kotlin, Rust or Go best serve long-term system needs.
• Reduce operational burden through better testing, observability, failure isolation, incident learning, and architecture that limits blast radius.
• Lead company-wide technical discussions, surface trade-offs clearly, and build alignment across Engineering, ML, Product, Data, Security, Compliance, and business partners.
• Stay close to implementation through design reviews, prototypes, and critical code while mentoring senior technical leaders and making the people around you more successful.
• Prioritize technical-debt and platform investments based on business value, risk reduction, and long-term return rather than technical elegance alone.

Skills

Backend engineering

Python

Kotlin

Java

APIs

AWS

Kubernetes

Communication skills

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Django

FastAPI

Kotlin/Spring Boot

gRPC/Protobuf

Temporal

Kubernetes/Helm

Datadog

Job description

Upstart is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Core Pricing team to lead cross-functional pricing platform initiatives and shape the long-term architecture. You will drive scalable, low-latency services that transform ML outputs into pricing decisions across multiple product lines, while partnering with ML, product, and data teams.

You will influence architecture, champion performance, and guide engineers across the company, delivering reliable pricing capabilities as Upstart expands