Preparing for an interview at Upstart requires a balanced approach. You must be ready to showcase both your structured program management methodology and your deep understanding of technical risk landscapes.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a strong grasp of technical risk management, cloud infrastructure concepts, and business continuity frameworks. Be prepared to explain how you apply industry standards (such as ISO 22301, NIST, or SOC 2) to practical, real-world engineering environments.

Problem-Solving Ability – Upstart values structured, analytical thinkers. When presented with ambiguous scenarios, you should clearly define the problem, break it down into manageable components, evaluate trade-offs, and propose data-driven solutions.

Stakeholder Alignment – As a Project Manager, your success depends on your ability to collaborate with diverse teams. You must show that you can speak the language of software engineers, security analysts, legal counsel, and executive leadership alike, translating technical risks into business impacts.

Execution & Delivery – Interviewers will look for a proven track record of driving initiatives to completion. You need to show that you are highly organized, proactive, and capable of managing dependencies, identifying critical paths, and mitigating risks before they impact project timelines.

The interview process at Upstart for project and program management roles is structured to be transparent, efficient, and thorough. Candidates consistently report that the recruiting team is highly communicative, keeping you informed of your status at every stage of the funnel. The overall process typically takes around three weeks from the initial application to the final decision.

The journey begins with a conversational HR recruiter screen focused on your background, career goals, and alignment with Upstart's core values. This is followed by a deep-dive interview with the hiring manager, where you will discuss your technical project management experience and your domain-specific knowledge in tech risk or BC/DR. The final stage is an interview panel consisting of multiple rounds conducted via Zoom. This panel includes peer project managers, engineering stakeholders, and cross-functional partners who will evaluate your behavioral competencies, problem-solving skills, and execution capabilities.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression of the Upstart hiring funnel. Candidates should use this visual roadmap to allocate their preparation time effectively, focusing heavily on behavioral stories and technical risk frameworks ahead of the intensive panel interview stage.

To excel in the Upstart interview process, you must understand the specific competencies your interviewers are trained to evaluate. Each round of the interview panel is designed to test a core pillar of technical project management.

Technical Risk & Disaster Recovery Execution

This evaluation area focuses on your ability to design, implement, and maintain robust business continuity and disaster recovery programs. Upstart operates a cloud-first infrastructure, meaning your experience must be relevant to modern cloud environments (such as AWS) rather than legacy on-premises data centers.

Be ready to go over:

• BC/DR Tabletop Simulations – How to plan, facilitate, and document disaster recovery exercises with engineering teams.
• Risk Assessments (BIA) – Conducting Business Impact Analyses to determine Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for critical services.
• Cloud Resiliency Concepts – Understanding multi-region deployments, failover mechanisms, and data replication strategies.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Integrating automated compliance checks into CI/CD pipelines, managing systemic risk in third-party SaaS integrations, and aligning BC/DR strategies with modern microservices architectures.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would design a disaster recovery drill for a core payment processing service without disrupting active users."
• "How do you determine which business systems are 'critical' when different department heads all claim their tools are top priority?"

Program Management & Cross-Functional Execution

This area tests your operational rigor and execution capability. Interviewers want to see that you can manage complex dependencies across multiple teams, track progress transparently, and ruthlessly prioritize deliverables.

Be ready to go over:

• Dependency Mapping – Identifying and managing critical paths across multiple engineering and product roadmaps.
• Agile & Hybrid Methodologies – Knowing when to apply Scrum, Kanban, or traditional waterfall planning depending on the project scope.
• Tool Customization – Leveraging Jira, Confluence, or advanced portfolio management software to create single sources of truth for stakeholders.

Example scenarios:

• "Describe a time when a critical dependency on another engineering team threatened to delay your entire program launch. How did you resolve it?"
• "How do you build a project schedule for an initiative where the technical requirements are highly ambiguous and changing weekly?"

As a Project Manager or Principal Program Manager at Upstart, your day-to-day work will be highly dynamic and collaborative. You will act as the connective tissue holding complex technical initiatives together, ensuring that engineering efforts align perfectly with business resilience goals.

Your primary focus will be leading the end-to-end lifecycle of critical programs. This includes defining program charters, setting clear milestones, establishing governance structures, and managing risk registers. You will not work in a silo; you will spend a significant portion of your day collaborating with Cloud Engineering, Security, Legal, and Compliance teams to identify potential vulnerabilities and build proactive mitigation plans.

Additionally, you will be responsible for operationalizing Upstart's BC/DR strategy. This involves organizing and executing regular disaster recovery drills, analyzing the results, and working with engineering teams to remediate any gaps identified during testing. You will also prepare executive-level reports, translating complex technical risk metrics into clear, actionable updates for Upstart's leadership team and external bank partners.