Senior Manager, Privacy Engineering

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 1,800 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 (opening Summer 2026), 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’s Privacy Engineering team builds the systems, controls, and practices that help protect borrower, applicant, partner, and Upstarter data across our products and platforms. The team works across Engineering, Security, Legal, Compliance, Product, Data, and Machine Learning to embed privacy-by-design into how Upstart builds, uses, retains, and governs data.

As the Senior Manager, Privacy Engineering at Upstart, you will lead the team responsible for building scalable privacy infrastructure and technical privacy controls across Upstart’s AI lending marketplace. You will set the team’s roadmap, grow and support privacy engineers, and help translate privacy and regulatory requirements into durable engineering systems.

How you’ll make an impact

Lead the Privacy Engineering team’s strategy, roadmap, and execution across privacy infrastructure, data governance, and privacy-by-design initiatives

Hire, coach, and develop a team of privacy engineers while establishing clear operating rhythms, priorities, and technical standards

Guide the design and delivery of scalable privacy controls, including data discovery, classification, access controls, audit logging, retention, deletion, lineage, encryption, and key management

Partner with Legal, Compliance, Security, Product, Data, Machine Learning, and Infrastructure teams to translate privacy requirements into practical technical solutions

Oversee privacy reviews, technical risk assessments, and threat modeling for new products, data flows, models, and platform capabilities

Define metrics and communicate progress, tradeoffs, dependencies, and risks to technical and cross-functional stakeholder

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, and 8+ years of experience in engineering, including at least 3 years of direct people management experience

Experience leading engineering teams responsible for production software, platform, privacy, security, or data systems

Experience designing, building, or operating privacy, security, data governance, or data platform capabilities in production environments

Experience translating privacy, security, compliance, or regulatory requirements into technical controls

Experience working with cross-functional partners such as Legal, Compliance, Security, Product, Data, or Machine Learning teams

Preferred Qualifications

Knowledge of privacy-by-design principles, data minimization, purpose limitation, consent, retention, deletion, and data subject rights

Knowledge of privacy and data protection regulations or frameworks such as GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, GLBA, FCRA, or similar requirements

Experience with privacy reviews, threat modeling, risk assessments, data inventories, lineage systems, or automated policy enforcement

Experience building privacy or governance controls for machine learning, AI, financial services, lending, or other regulated data environments

Ability to communicate technical privacy tradeoffs clearly across engineering, legal, product, security, and business audiences

Travel requirements As a digital first company, the majority of your work can be accomplished remotely. The majority of our employees can live and work anywhere in the U.S but are encouraged to to still spend high quality time in-person collaborating via regular onsites. The in-pers…