Head of Recovery Strategy, Process and Programs

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 simultaneously delivering the exceptional 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, which means that most Upstarters live and work anywhere in the United States. However, we also have offices in San Mateo, California; Columbus, Ohio; and Austin, Texas.

Most Upstarters join us 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: 

The Recovery team at Upstart is responsible for maximizing post-default recoveries while ensuring compliant, borrower-centric engagement across a diverse and growing vendor ecosystem. As our Recovery operations mature, we are investing in building smarter, more scalable systems that reduce manual risk, improve data-driven decisions, and align our vendor network with long-term strategic outcomes.

We are seeking a Head of Recovery Strategy, Process & Programs to lead our transformation roadmap across vendor integration, automation, compliance infrastructure, and intelligent placement logic. This individual will work cross-functionally across Product, Engineering, Compliance, Legal, Data Analytics, and Operations to architect the next evolution of Recovery operations at Upstart.

 

How you’ll make an impact

• Lead Recovery’s transformation roadmap: Design and deliver high-impact initiatives that reduce manual risk, automate vendor workflows, and scale internal process efficiency across legal recovery, bankruptcy, affidavits, DSC, debt sales, and probate.
• Architect scalable vendor infrastructure: Enhance frameworks for vendor onboarding, integration, compliance scorecards, and audit-readiness, ensuring Recovery is built to scale intelligently across a growing multi-vendor ecosystem.
• Quantify and optimize placement strategy: Partner with data analytics, ML, and operations to improve liquidation and cost-to-collect through segmentation logic, hypothesis-driven testing, and performance-based routing.
• Drive analytical and cross-functional execution: Lead strategic programs from concept to implementation—including the rollout of tools like Convoke, legal collections testing, and compliance health models—grounded in measurable ROI and portfolio-level impact.
• Own Recovery’s strategic alignment layer: Serve as the connective tissue between Product, Engineering, Legal, ML, and Ops to ensure programs are modeled, implemented, and monitored with discipline.
• Enable performance & quality execution, not manage it: This is a high-ownership individual contributor role. You'll complement operational leadership by enabling managers with scalable tools, systems, and decision frameworks—not by running day-to-day vendor performance.

 

Minimum Qualifications 

• 8+ years of experience in product strategy, operations, or transformation program leadership in a regulated or financial services environment
• Proven success leading analytically rigorous initiatives involving ROI modeling, hypothesis-driven testing, and cost-benefit analysis while  leading complex, cross-functional initiatives involving vendors, risk/compliance, and technology teams
• Demonstrated ability to estimate financial impact at the unit and portfolio level (e.g., revenue per transaction, net present value over time)
• Demonstrated experience applying process design, automation, or analytics to solve operational problems
• Excellent project management skills and the ability to organize and drive multiple workstreams
• Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous problems, develop hypotheses, and present recommendations
• Excellent communicator: able to synthesize complex analyses into clear, actionable roadmaps
• Proven analytical skills, with the ability to monitor performance metrics and make data-driven decisions
• Familiarity with compliance and operational risk frameworks in regulated financial operations
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth environment with a strong sense of urgency

 

Preferred Qualifications

• Comfort building and interpreting unit economics models, br