Technical Engineering Leader

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to large, Fortune 100 enterprises with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.

We are looking for a Technical Engineering Leader, Core Platforms to drive innovation, lead a high-performing engineering team, and shape the future of our platform. If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, thrive in a fast-paced environment, and enjoy working with cutting-edge technologies like generative AI and scalable systems, we’d love to hear from you.

As the Senior Engineering Leader for Core Platform Services, you will collaborate with design, product management, and machine learning teams to rapidly prototype, build, and launch transformative solutions. You will lead a dynamic software engineering team, leveraging your expertise in full-stack development—especially front end technologies—and AI/ML integration to drive impactful results. This role reports directly to the Senior Director of Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Full-Stack Leadership: Leverage your frontend expertise (React, Angular, or Vue.js) and robust backend knowledge to build and maintain scalable, high-performance services.

• Architectural Excellence: Design resilient, cloud-native architectures, including microservices and data pipelines, for high availability and scalability using AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Product Innovation & Rapid Prototyping: Drive product transformation by identifying opportunities for innovation, creating prototypes, and iterating quickly toward customer-ready solutions.

• Software Lifecycle Management: Implement CI/CD pipelines for model training, deployment, monitoring, and versioning, ensuring seamless production rollouts and model observability.

• AI & Machine Learning Integration: Collaborate with ML experts to embed AI/Gen AI capabilities, including LLMs, into our products to enhance intelligence and user value.

• Tech Trend Awareness: Stay ahead of emerging AI/ML trends (e.g., prompt engineering, transformer architectures) and promote continuous learning within the team.

• Team Leadership & Growth: Build and lead a high-performing technical team, fostering collaboration, mentorship, and engineering excellence.

• Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with product, data science, design, and ML teams to deliver features based on A/B testing, user feedback, and analytics.

What it takes to catch our eye

• Proven expertise in full-stack development with deep specialization in frontend technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Angular, or Vue.js).

• Experience leading engineering teams of 10+ people, with a focus on mentorship, collaboration, and technical leadership.

• A track record of driving product innovation and successfully transforming complex ideas into scalable solutions.

• Strong problem-solving, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills in a fast-paced, iterative environment.

• Hands-on experience applying AI/Gen AI concepts, integrating ML models into applications, and working with LLMs. Experience with agentic platforms is a plus!

Come change how the world works.

At Upwork, you’ll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals. While we have a physical office in Palo Alto, we currently hire full-time employees in 21 states in the United States.

At the core of our vibrant culture are shared values that form the foundation of our organization. These values revolve around trust, risk-taking, customer focus, and excellence. Our overarching mission is to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster an environment where individuals are encouraged to bring their authentic selves to work, nurturing personal and professional growth through development opportunities, mentorship programs, and participation in Upwork Belonging Communities.

We take pride in providing exceptional benefits to our employees. These include comprehensive medical insurance coverage for both you and your family, unlimited paid time off, a 401(k) plan with matching contributions, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. To explore these benefits in detail, as well as gain insights into our company values, working principles, and the overall employee experience, we invite you to visit our Life at Upwork page.

Check out our Careers page to learn more about the employee experience.

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Additionally, a criminal background check may be run on a candidate after a conditional offer of employment is made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with applicable law, including the California Fair Chance Act and local Fair Chance ordinances.