Staff Applied Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Applications

Upstart; United States; Remote; USD 178,000 - 247,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI lending platform is seeking a Staff Applied Machine Learning Engineer to develop user-facing features using large language models. This role involves collaboration with various teams to enhance product capabilities and requires strong experience in software engineering and machine learning. This position is remote-friendly offering competitive compensation.

Benefits

Competitive Compensation

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) with company match

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Generous leave policies

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years on ML-driven products.
• Ability to lead complex initiatives across teams.
• Strong backend development skills and experience with cloud-native tools.

Responsibilities

• Design and build user-facing ML features.
• Own the technical architecture for applied ML systems.
• Collaborate with product, design, and ML research teams.

Skills

Software engineering

Machine learning

Backend development (Python)

APIs integration

Cloud-native tooling

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

Job description

Overview

About Upstart

Upstart is the 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 delivering the digital-first lending experience their customers demand. More than 80% of borrowers are approved instantly, with zero documentation to upload.

Upstart is a digital-first company. Most Upstarters live and work anywhere in the United States, with offices in San Mateo, California; Columbus, Ohio; and Austin, Texas.

Most Upstarters join 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 new Applied LLM team is building foundational infrastructure that democratizes access to generative AI for every product and engineering team across the company. This cross-functional team sits at the intersection of machine learning, product, and engineering. Our mission is to bring the power of ML—particularly large language models (LLMs) and generative AI—to life in Upstart’s core products.

As a Staff Applied Machine Learning Engineer focused on building LLM applications, you’ll work closely with researchers, product managers, platform engineers, and designers to ship intelligent features that elevate the user experience and expand the capabilities of our systems.

Position Location — This role is available in the following locations: San Mateo, Columbus, Austin, Remote

Time Zone Requirements — This team operates on the East/West Coast time zones.

Travel Requirements — This team has regular on-site collaboration sessions, 3–4 days per quarter at one of our offices. If you need to travel to attend these meetups, Upstart will cover all travel expenses.

How you’ll make an impact

• Design and build user-facing ML features that harness LLMs and generative AI to unlock new product capabilities
• Partner with product, design, and ML research to prototype and deliver high-impact, ML-powered experiences
• Own the technical architecture and implementation strategy for applied ML systems, balancing latency, observability, and iteration speed
• Build scalable services and APIs that bring model outputs to users in trustworthy and intuitive ways
• Collaborate across platform, infra, and legal/compliance teams to ensure ML deployments meet standards for safety, fairness, and performance
• Establish and evangelize best practices for prompt design, model evaluation, and experimentation across the organization

What we’re looking for

• Minimum qualifications
  • 6+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years working directly on ML-driven products or intelligent systems
  • Proven ability to lead complex initiatives across engineering, product, and research stakeholders
  • Strong backend development skills (e.g., Python with FastAPI or Flask), plus experience with cloud-native tooling (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform)
  • Experience integrating LLMs or ML models into production systems, including APIs and user-facing applications
  • Excellent communication skills and a collaborative, product-minded approach
  • Ability to think rigorously about system design, latency tradeoffs, and user impact when working with ML features
• Preferred qualifications
  • Experience shipping GenAI or LLM-powered features using frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or OpenAI APIs
  • Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone), and real-time inference patterns
  • Proficiency in full-stack development, including front-end work with React or similar frameworks
  • Strong intuition for prompt engineering, model testing, and evaluation methodologies
  • Experience navigating complex requirements around explainability, user trust, or compliance in ML applications
  • Track record of influencing architecture or product direction at a team or org level

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 onsite gatherings, 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

United States | Remote - Anticipated Base Salary Range $178,400 — $246,800 USD

Upstart is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to ensuring that underrepresented classes receive better access to affordable credit, and are 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 [e-mail]

https://www.upstart.com/candidate_privacy_policy