Senior Applied Scientist, Unsecured Underwriting (Remote)

OhioX; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 276,000; Full time

Job summary

Upstart, a leading AI lending marketplace, seeks an Applied Scientist for the Unsecured Underwriting Machine Learning team. You will research and implement enhancements to Upstart’s core unsecured underwriting model, directly influencing credit decisions and accelerating research pace while maintaining rigor and responsible oversight.

You will collaborate with Engineering and other teams to translate research into scalable, production-ready solutions, ensuring reliability, validation, and

Qualifications

• Graduate degree in mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, physics, econometrics, operations research, computer science, or related quantitative field.
• 2+ years of experience conducting machine learning, statistical modeling, or applied quantitative research in academic or industry settings.
• Experience developing and evaluating machine learning or statistical models using Python.
• Demonstrated knowledge of probability, statistics, and machine learning methods.
• Experience designing experiments or validation analyses to assess model accuracy, reliability, or predictive performance.

Responsibilities

• Research machine learning and statistical approaches that improve the predictive performance of unsecured underwriting models.
• Design, implement, and evaluate model enhancements using rigorous experimentation and validation methods.
• Analyze model performance and downstream effects to confirm that proposed changes improve decisioning reliably.
• Partner with various Engineering teams to support technical reviews, implementation, and deployment.
• Translate research findings into clear recommendations, documented methodologies, and production-ready solutions.

Skills

Machine learning

Statistical modeling

Python

Experimentation

Results analysis

Education

Graduate degree in quantitative field

Job description

Upstart, a leading AI lending marketplace, seeks an Applied Scientist for the Unsecured Underwriting Machine Learning team. You will research and implement enhancements to Upstart’s core unsecured underwriting model, directly influencing credit decisions and accelerating research pace while maintaining rigor and responsible oversight.

You will collaborate with Engineering and other teams to translate research into scalable, production-ready solutions, ensuring reliability, validation, and