Director, People Experience

About this role

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 3,000 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 is looking for a Director of People Experience to bring strategy, coherence, and exceptional execution to some of our most consequential enterprise People programs. You will own and evolve our performance and compensation cycles, employee listening program, GenAI acceleration efforts, enterprise employee engagement rhythm, and employee resource group operating model. You will help us understand what these experiences reveal about our organization, recommend where we should act, and build the systems that turn good intentions into a scalable and distinctly Upstart experience.

This is an individual contributor Director role for someone who enjoys operating at both altitudes: developing a clear point of view with senior leaders and personally building the plan, process, communication, or tool needed to make it real.

You will join Upstart's Communications, Culture & Development team, a group responsible for helping employees understand where the company is going, feel connected to its purpose, and build the capabilities to do their best work. The right person will add a new kind of leadership to that team: someone who sees the whole employee experience, finds the opportunity inside the signal, and knows how to turn an idea into something that works.

How you’ll make an impact

• Own the strategy, design, and end-to-end delivery of Upstart's mid-year and year-end performance cycles, creating a clear and effective experience for employees and managers.

• Lead Upstart's employee listening strategy and Pulse program, partnering with People Analytics and HRBPs to move from survey data to organizational insight, leader action, and meaningful follow-through with employees.

• Drive the employee program for GenAI acceleration, helping Upstarters adopt new tools and ways of working through thoughtful change strategy, communications, learning, experimentation, and measurement.

• Build and govern a dynamic enterprise employee engagement calendar that gives the People Team and senior leaders a clear view of significant employee asks, upcoming communications, timing conflicts, and cumulative burden.

• Partner with functional owners across Upstart to improve the timing, sequencing, messaging, and delivery of major company-wide employee asks while they retain ownership of the underlying program.

• Strengthen our employee resource groups by defining a clear purpose, sustainable operating model, shared standards, annual rhythm, and self-service tools for volunteer leaders and executive sponsors.

• Identify employee-facing needs that do not yet have a clear strategy or owner, develop a point of view, align stakeholders, and build practical approaches that can scale.

• Translate program insights into concise recommendations for People and business leaders, bringing strong judgment about employee needs, organizational tradeoffs, and effective implementation.

• Establish clear measures of success, use data and feedback to improve the portfolio, and build the documentation, governance, and operating practices that support future scale.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience across employee experience, internal communications, enterprise program management, People/HR programs, organizational change, or a related field.

• A track record of owning complex, enterprise-wide programs that affect a broad employee population and require alignment across senior, cross-functional stakeholders.

• Exceptional strategic and systems thinking. You can take an ambiguous problem, identify the root need, develop a clear recommendation, and translate it into a practical plan.

• Excellent written and verbal communication. You make complexity clear, adapt to the audience, and can present a well-supported point of view to senior leaders.

• Strong influence and relationship-building skills, including the confidence to challenge a partner, negotiate tradeoffs, or say 'not now' when the employee experience requires it.

• Comfort using quantitative and qualitative data to identify patterns, test assumptions, and recommend action.

• High standards for execution and an eagerness to roll up your sleeves. You do not believe seniority puts distance between you and the work.

• Sound judgment about when to act independently, when to seek additional context, and when a decision requires escalation.

• Curiosity, humility, and the willingness to ch

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