Senior Manager, Vendor Management

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 Secured Lending organization is building the first-line risk and control infrastructure that will support the next stage of growth across home equity line of credit, auto direct, and auto indirect dealer products. The team helps ensure secured lending products operate with clear governance, durable controls, high-quality execution, and readiness for bank partner and regulatory review.

Vendor Management is the first-line function responsible for business oversight of the critical third parties and outsourced activities that secured lending depends on to originate, close, and service loans. The function works within Upstart’s enterprise third-party risk management framework to ensure vendor relationships are properly documented, monitored, escalated, and managed according to their risk and criticality.

As the Senior Manager, Vendor Management at Upstart, you will build and lead this function end-to-end, reporting directly to the Head of Secured Lending. You will lead a small team and partner closely with Operations, Compliance, Legal, Technology, Product, Enterprise Risk, and business owners to establish the vendor oversight framework, monitoring cadence, issue management routines, and governance documentation needed to support a durable, exam-ready vendor management program.

How You’ll Make An Impact

• Build and lead the secured lending first-line vendor oversight function, including the vendor inventory, risk-tiering approach, monitoring cadence, governance reporting, and escalation routines for critical third-party relationships.
• Own business oversight of critical vendors and outsourced activities across the third-party risk lifecycle, including due diligence support, contract and service-level tracking, performance monitoring, issue management, and termination or exit planning.
• Monitor vendor execution against contractual terms, service standards, data requirements, compliance expectations, and business controls, identifying trends that may create operational, regulatory, consumer impact, or continuity risk.
• Drive remediation of vendor performance issues by identifying root causes, aligning owners on corrective actions, tracking issue closure, and escalating material risks to business leaders, Compliance, Legal, Enterprise Risk, and other stakeholders.
• Maintain contingency, transition, and exit planning for critical third-party relationships, ensuring vendor dependencies are understood and managed before they create unacceptable concentration, continuity, or operational risk.
• Produce clear, inspection-ready vendor oversight documentation, including performance reporting, risk assessments, issue logs, business reviews, evidence packages, and executive summaries for bank partner and regulatory review.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in third-party risk management, vendor management, financial services operations, operational risk, compliance, or a related function in a regulated financial services environment.
• Experience overseeing critical vendor relationships or outsourced business activities, including risk tiering, due diligence, ongoing performance monitoring, issue management, and contingency or exit planning.
• Experience managing vendor execution against contractual terms, service-level expectations, data requirements, control requirements, or business continuity standards.
• Experience identifying, escalating, and remediating vendor performance deficiencies, compliance findings, operational incidents, consumer impact risks, or fourth-party risks.
• Experience leading analysts, managing a vendor oversight function, or owning cross-functional third-party risk, operational risk, compliance, or financial services control programs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying OCC, FFIEC, or equivalent bank regulatory expectations for third-party risk management, including risk-based oversight of critical vendors and outsourced activities in a regulated bank or bank-partner environment.
• Experience building or maturing a first-line vendor oversight program for a business unit, operating within a 2LOD or enterprise TPRM framework.
• Experience overseeing one or more of the following vendor or partner types in consumer lending: mortgage subservicers, loan origination system or technology platform vendors, dealer networks (including dealer due diligence and conduct monitoring), affiliate or fintech platform relationships, appraisal management companies, title and settlement providers, or credit reporting and data vendors.
• Knowledge of consumer lending operations, servicing controls, complaint or error resolution, credit reporting oversight, data quality, vendor controls, or consumer compliance risk.
• Skilled in producing exam-ready vendor oversight documentation, performance reports, risk assessments, issue tracking, governance materials, policies and procedures, and executive summaries.

Key skills/competency

• Vendor Management
• Third-Party Risk Management
• Financial Services Operations
• Operational Risk
• Compliance
• Risk Assessment
• Governance
• Regulatory Compliance
• Performance Monitoring
• Issue Management