At Upstart, growth isn’t something that happens only when you earn a promotion, it’s built into the work itself. From interns shipping production code to leaders expanding into entirely new areas of the business, Upstarters are trusted with meaningful challenges and unique opportunities to make an even bigger impact.
Every career journey here looks different, but many begin the same way: with curiosity, ownership, and a willingness to say yes to something new. To bring that to life, we asked three Upstarters at different stages of their careers to share how they’ve grown with us.
Learning Through Real Ownership
When Brian Matamet joined Upstart as a Software Engineering Intern, he expected a typical internship. One that was centered around small projects and opportunities to observe more experienced engineers. Instead, he found himself contributing to work that mattered.
"I came in expecting the 'usual' intern experience," Brian says. "Instead I was treated like part of the team from day one and given real work that actually shipped."
That trust continued when Brian joined Upstart as a full-time engineer.
Early in his career, his manager asked him to lead a new sign-in feature. The project was high-visibility, the requirements were ambiguous, and solving it required Brian to work across security, design, compliance, identity, and product. His manager was there to support the big decisions, but gave Brian room to own the work day-to-day.
The experience changed how Brian thought about his role. He learned to take an unclear problem, find the right people and information, evaluate the options, and return with a recommendation rather than simply a list of questions. More importantly, it gave him confidence to take on bigger challenges.
"Getting through that end-to-end, and hearing afterward that my manager had felt comfortable letting me drive, was the moment I really started to see myself as an owner rather than an executor," he says.
Since then, Brian's career has taken him across several areas of engineering, from acquisition and growth to partner-facing platform work and, more recently, Pricing: a complex, business-critical domain that required him to ramp up almost entirely from scratch. Today, he's a Senior Software Engineer, and the biggest change isn't simply his title. It's the scope of the problems he's equipped to solve.
Staying Curious Opens New Doors
Growth can also mean building on the expertise you already have and staying open to where it might take you next.
Carnesha Craft first joined Upstart as Lead Product & Regulatory Counsel for our Mortgage and SMB product lines, where she helped establish the legal and regulatory foundation for HELOC as its “founding attorney.” After leaving Upstart for a few years, it was the people and mission that ultimately brought her back for a second time.
"During my first stint, I had a chance to work with incredibly smart and thoughtful people all aligned toward a common goal," she says. "I stayed in touch throughout the years and then the timing was right, we jumped on it."
When Carnesha returned in 2025, she led legal, regulatory, and risk management for our growing Home Lending business. But as Upstart continued building out Secured Lending, Carnesha’s role grew with it. Today, as VP of Secured Lending, she leads across Secured Lending Risk and HELOC Operations, bringing together teams that help drive the business forward and deliver strong customer outcomes.
For Carnesha, that evolution wasn’t something she had mapped out in advance. It was a collection of small moments: collaborating on complex problems, building relationships across functions, and earning the trust of leadership that led to her growth.
"I have been most surprised by how organic the opportunities to grow are at Upstart," she says. "Opportunities develop naturally from the work, the trust you build, and management's willingness to let you stretch into adjacent spaces."
Stepping into those adjacent areas has meant moving beyond the functional expertise Carnesha had built and developing a deeper understanding of how different parts of the business work together. As she continues to shape her role, each new challenge brings something new to master.
"I've tried to stay deeply committed to being a learner," she says. "That means remaining curious, asking questions, seeking out people who know more than I do, and being willing to step into areas where I may not yet be the expert."
It’s a mindset that’s already taken her far, and one she’s found reflected in many of her colleagues. That shared curiosity keeps Carnesha open to new ways she can contribute. and new possibilities for where her career can take her.
A Career in Four Acts
For Jesse Obbink, growing at Upstart has meant repeatedly reinventing himself.
Jesse joined Upstart in 2018, when the Product organization was still relatively small. Today, he's GM and SVP of Unsecured Lending and Borrower Success and a member of Upstart's leadership team.
He describes the years between as a career in four acts: first, helping build and scale Upstart's early Product organization; then bringing Small Dollar Lending from an idea to a new line of business; next, taking responsibility for Servicing and learning to lead a large, operationally complex organization; and now, leading Upstart's largest line of business.
"Each of those four acts required that I professionally reinvent myself," Jesse says. One of the experiences that most changed the trajectory of his career came relatively early.
After a couple of years in Product, Jesse received candid feedback that while there were areas where he excelled, the role wasn't necessarily making the best use of his strengths. Rather than simply asking him to keep doing the same job differently, Upstart's leadership challenged him to consider where those strengths could have greater impact.
The result was an opportunity to build a new line of business.Taking Small Dollar Lending from an idea to a real product forced Jesse to think beyond the boundaries of product management. He had to consider the entire business, from customer needs and product strategy to unit economics, scale, and long-term viability.
It also shaped the way he thinks about career growth. Sometimes development is about getting better at the role you're already doing. Other times, it's about recognizing where your strengths can create greater leverage and being willing to step into something entirely new.
That pattern has continued throughout Jesse's career at Upstart. Each new opportunity has required him to leave behind some of what he already knew, operate at a different scale, and develop new capabilities. It's one of the reasons he's remained at Upstart for so long.
"Upstart says yes to people who have the drive and ambition to create opportunities for themselves and come forward with a credible plan for how they can do something great," he says.
Growth Built Into the Work
Brian, Carnesha, and Jesse have followed three very different paths, but the same themes run through their stories: trust, curiosity, meaningful challenges, and the freedom to stretch beyond what they already know.
That's what we mean when we say growth is built into the work at Upstart. Supported by learning resources, professional development stipends, mentorship, and timely feedback, Upstarters have opportunities to build new skills and expand their impact through the work they do every day.
Because growth here isn't measured only by the next title you earn. It's also about what you learn and the opportunities you embrace.
Ready to see where your career could take you? Explore opportunities at Upstart.
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