Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Upstart is a leading AI lending marketplace on a mission to reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans. They are seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to lead the SRE team in ensuring the reliability and observability of their production systems while driving best practices and collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance operational excellence.
Responsibilities
- Lead the definition, advocacy, and adoption of SRE principles across engineering teams
- Partner with leadership to shape long-term reliability, resiliency, and observability strategies
- Champion distributed tracing, real user monitoring (RUM), and key performance metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) to improve system visibility and user experience
- Build and scale self-healing systems to minimize manual intervention and reduce downtime
- Drive enterprise-wide improvements to incident response processes, including those related to Machine Learning systems
- Collaborate closely with Development Productivity and Quality teams to improve engineering velocity without sacrificing reliability
- Influence technical and operational roadmaps through data-driven insights and hands-on technical contributions
- Own and deliver cross-functional initiatives from concept through execution, applying program management skills to align stakeholders and achieve results
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, or a related field (or its equivalent) + 8 years of experience
- Combined experience with both Software Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering, with a balanced background in both disciplines
- Proven track record as an SRE thought leader and evangelist, driving adoption of reliability best practices across organizations
- Strong communication and mentoring skills to influence engineers across disciplines
- Proficiency in Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript
- Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation, etc.)
- Experience building internal tooling from scratch in agile development environments
- Expertise with observability, distributed tracing, RUM, LCP, and performance monitoring tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus)
- Experience with on-call and incident management, including large-scale or ML-related incidents
- Strong background in automation and building self-healing systems
- Hands-on experience with LLM/GenAI to improve SRE efficiency and processes
- Program management skills, including the ability to propose innovative solutions, influence leadership, improve processes, and drive cross-functional projects to completion
- Experience with service mesh
- Full stack development skills
- Experience building or extending observability platforms
- Background in Development Productivity or Quality Platforms
- Experience in high-scale SaaS, microservice-oriented cloud environments
Benefits
- Target bonuses
- Equity compensation
- Generous benefits packages (including medical, dental, vision, and 401k)
- Competitive compensation, including base pay, bonus opportunities, and annual equity grants that vest quarterly
- Retirement benefits to help you plan for the future, including a 401(k) or Group Retirement Savings Plan with a company match of $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 annually (USD in the US, CAD in Canada)
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with discounted stock purchase options for eligible employees (US only)
- Comprehensive health coverage designed to support you and your family, including medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources for US and supplemental health coverage for Canada.
- Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart for eligible plans (US only)
- Income protection benefits, including life insurance and disability coverage for added financial security
- Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays, in line with local requirements
- Paid family and parental leave to support caregiving and major life moments (duration varies by country)
- Family-centered benefits to support fertility, parenthood, and caregiving needs
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offering mental health support and life-centered resources
- Financial wellness resources, including access to financial planning tools and a financial concierge service (US Only)
- Annual wellness allowance to support your physical and emotional well-being and personal development, based on what matters most to you
- Annual productivity allowance to invest in relevant tools and resources you need to do your best work, no matter where you work from
- Connection and community through team events, all-company updates, and employee resource groups (ERGs)
- Onsite perks, including catered lunches and fully stocked micro-kitchens when working from one of our offices in the Bay Area, Austin, Columbus, and New York City (opening Summer 2026!)
Company Overview
Upstart is a leading AI lending marketplace partnering with banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit. It was founded in 2012, and is headquartered in San Mateo, California, USA, with a workforce of 1001-5000 employees. Its website is https://upstart.com/about.Company H1B Sponsorship
Upstart has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 14 in 2026, 67 in 2025, 66 in 2024, 84 in 2023, 85 in 2022, 42 in 2021, 15 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.