Upwork

3D Artist

• Define motion tokens: duration, easing curves, delays, and reusable presets (e.g. transition-short, easing-emphasized).
• Align tokens with engineering feasibility (web + mobile).
• Create system-level motion principles (intentional, authentic, inclusive, grounded).
• Document when to use motion and when not to.
• Define accessibility standards (reduced motion, alternatives).
• Translate principles into patterns for components and interactions (e.g. overlays, toasts, navigation, micro-feedback).
• Provide Figma prototypes and animation examples for designers.
• Partner with engineers to ensure tokens and guidelines are implementable.
• Run short workshops/reviews so our team can confidently apply motion after the contract ends.

Motion Design Systems Expert – Contract

Machine Learning Engineer

• Architect and implement scalable infrastructure to support LLM-based Agentic systems, including multi-agent pipelines, and real-time orchestration.
• Design APIs, SDKs, and internal tooling to accelerate productivity through AI agent adoption.
• Drive developer advocacy by partnering to produce technical content, samples, and reference architectures that simplify integration with our platform.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to align technical solutions with product strategy, ensuring high developer productivity and agent performance.
• Provide consulting and hands-on support to teams integrating with our agentic marketplace, advocating for best practices and evolving the ecosystem based on feedback.
• Contribute to AI/ML research initiatives where applicable, representing Upwork at conferences and in technical communities.

Lead Machine Learning Engineer – AI Agents

Systems Engineer

• Build end-to-end solutions, from endpoint engineering to systems engineering, ensuring compliance, security, and seamless processes.
• Integrate artificial intelligence into IT workflows to drive efficiency and innovation.
• Drive the design and implementation of centralized identity management and controls, aligning with modern security practices.
• Diagnose problems relating to critical services such as Jira, Confluence and others to prevent problem recurrence
• Maintaining and enhancing existing scripts, tools, and methodologies
• On call resource for resolving technical emergencies
• Perform implementation, operational support, maintenance, and optimization of cloud and on premise infrastructures

Contract Systems Engineer

Operations

• Lead global operations for core infrastructure platforms, including Kubernetes (EKS), developer environments, CI/CD systems, and enterprise integrations, ensuring performance, reliability, and security.
• Define and execute the roadmap for secure, multi-tenant infrastructure that powers engineering and AI/ML workloads across the company.
• Drive automation for build and release processes, incident response, and compliance readiness while maintaining strong reliability standards.
• Oversee platform-wide observability, including logging, monitoring, distributed tracing, and SLO instrumentation.
• Partner with AI platform teams to operationalize next-gen infrastructure such as GPU provisioning, MCP/Agent Marketplace, and model-serving environments.
• Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing, globally distributed team that fosters innovation and technical excellence.
• Represent infrastructure operations in strategic planning and architectural reviews, influencing company-wide platform investments and direction.

Director of Platform Operations – Infrastructure

• Design and implement resilient infrastructure for agentic LLM systems, including multi-agent coordination, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and real-time orchestration.
• Lead training and fine-tuning of large-scale foundation models tailored to Upwork’s domain-specific challenges and user base.
• Partner with engineering, product, and research teams to align technical development with strategic business priorities.
• Mentor and support other engineers and researchers to elevate team-wide technical capabilities and foster a culture of innovation and inclusion.
• Drive experimentation and translate findings into robust, scalable production systems with clear metrics of success.
• Identify opportunities for innovation, challenge conventional approaches, and lead initiatives that push the boundaries of applied ML.
• Contribute to the external AI/ML community through papers, talks, or open-source contributions, enhancing Upwork’s visibility in the field.

Senior Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Product Analyst

• Design and execute advanced experiments (e.g., A/B tests, difference-in-difference, regression discontinuity, synthetic control, switchback designs) to rigorously measure causal product impact.
• Translate complex analyses into business recommendations that balance marketplace efficiency, user retention, and revenue growth.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to co-design solutions, benchmark industry practices, and influence product roadmaps with data-driven insights.
• Build and maintain reporting frameworks, dashboards, and deep-dive analyses to monitor performance of monetization products including ads, subscriptions, and Connects.
• Proactively identify opportunities to enhance the monetization ecosystem by framing problems from the customer’s perspective and anticipating business needs.
• Present insights in clear, compelling ways tailored to executives, product leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Senior Product Analyst

Financial Planning and Analysis

• Lead and manage the end-to-end monthly forecasting process, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and cross-functional inputs
• Prepare and deliver monthly management reporting packages to senior leadership, highlighting trends, risks, and opportunities
• Partner with finance, HR, accounting, and business units to validate data and explain key variances and drivers
• Maintain and improve forecast models, templates, and dashboards in Planful, ensuring accuracy and usability
• Monitor and analyze company-wide metrics (revenue, expenses, margins, EBITDA) against targets, surfacing insights proactively
• Support the annual planning cycle, including scenario modeling, calendar management, and stakeholder coordination
• Build and maintain scalable documentation of forecasting processes, assumptions, and reporting timelines to ensure continuity and accountability

Senior Financial Analyst, Corporate FP&A

Software Engineer

• Lead vision, execution, and operations of Upwork’s advertising and monetization platforms
• Guide multiple teams across ad serving, targeting, measurement, and monetization systems
• Define and communicate the engineering strategy for Ads & Monetization in alignment with company objectives
• Lead execution across ad tech systems, balancing near-term revenue needs with long-term architectural scalability
• Build and evolve platforms that support new ad formats, targeting capabilities, and monetization models
• Develop and mentor senior engineering managers and leads
• Partner with product, design, and data stakeholders to shape monetization strategies and drive measurable outcomes
• Ensure quality, performance, and reliability across large-scale distributed systems
• Represent Ads & Monetization progress and outcomes to executive leadership with data-driven insights

Director of Engineering, Ads and Monetization

Communications

• Serve as the chief storyteller for Upwork, shaping and driving integrated communications strategy
• Lead all internal and external communications to amplify mission and vision across customers, investors, press, analysts, and employees
• Report directly to the COO and partner with senior leadership on executive visibility and public narratives
• Define and own measurable communications strategy across internal communications, public relations, executive visibility, investor relations, and crisis communications
• Oversee global PR and media outreach and build relationships with tier-one press and industry analysts
• Develop metrics-driven strategies to drive marketplace growth and evaluate communications performance
• Lead financial-market messaging with Finance and Legal for earnings calls, investor days, and shareholder engagement
• Design internal communications to strengthen culture and employee engagement
• Build and scale a high-performing communications team focused on narrative excellence and flawless execution
• Measure and optimize communications impact using analytics, tools, and insights

Vice President, Communications

Full-stack Engineer

• Collect high-quality training data and curate datasets for supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning use cases
• Build scalable featurization and preprocessing pipelines to transform raw data into structured inputs for AI/ML model development
• Partner with ML engineers and researchers to define data requirements and production workflows for LLM-based agents and autonomous AI systems
• Lead development of infrastructure enabling experimentation, evaluation, and deployment of machine learning models in production
• Support orchestration and real-time inference pipelines using Python and cloud-native tools, ensuring low-latency and high availability
• Mentor engineers and foster a high-performance, collaborative engineering culture
• Drive cross-functional alignment with product, infrastructure, and research stakeholders on progress, goals, and architecture

Lead Software Engineer, AI Data Systems

Backend Engineer

• Design, build, and maintain APIs for the AI/ML Services Interface with reliability, scalability, and performance as core priorities
• Partner with frontend and backend engineers to define API contracts and deliver seamless integrations
• Implement and strengthen API security, authentication, and authorization mechanisms
• Conduct code reviews, provide constructive feedback, and ensure adherence to engineering best practices
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and continuously improve API performance and developer experience
• Stay current with API development trends, frameworks, and tools, sharing insights with the team
• Take ownership of projects, contribute to shaping API standards, and work on complex, high-visibility initiatives that impact millions of users

Senior API Engineer

Director

• Lead end-to-end M&A and investments execution including sourcing, valuation, due diligence, negotiations, and post-merger integration
• Build and oversee detailed evaluation exercises, valuation models, ROI frameworks, and scenario analyses to evaluate deal economics
• Prepare investment / M&A memos and presentations for leadership and the Board of Directors
• Drive post-deal integration with cross-functional leaders, set KPIs and milestones to measure integration success
• Partner with Corporate Strategy to advance market, competitive, and ecosystem intelligence
• Provide strategic direction, mentorship, and performance management to the Corporate Development team
• Cultivate relationships with bankers, VCs, advisors, and entrepreneurs
• Report to the VP of Strategy, Corporate Development & Partnerships with high executive visibility

Senior Director, Corporate Development

Product Manager

• Provide coverage through the end of the year on high-visibility Ads & Connects initiatives.
• Drive strategy and execution for Boosted Profiles (talent-side) and Featured Job Post (client-side).
• Partner with senior leaders to shape marketplace design, launch experiments, and deliver measurable revenue and growth results.
• Work cross-functionally with analytics, design, economics, pricing, FP&A, and marketing.
• Define, prioritize, and deliver roadmap enhancements with cross-functional partners.
• Design, run, and evaluate experiments; translate insights into strategic product decisions.
• Track and interpret key metrics to ensure revenue-impacting initiatives are aligned and on schedule.
• Simplify complex product challenges using first-principles thinking, data analysis, and informed intuition.
• Ensure cross-team alignment and timely delivery of milestones, keeping stakeholders engaged and accountable.

Senior Product Manager, Ads & Connects

• Design and implement systems to collect and curate high-quality training datasets for supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning use cases
• Build scalable featurization and preprocessing pipelines to transform raw data into structured inputs for AI/ML model development
• Partner with ML engineers and researchers to define data requirements and production workflows that support LLM-based agents and autonomous AI systems
• Lead the development of infrastructure that enables experimentation, evaluation, and deployment of machine learning models in production environments
• Support orchestration and real-time inference pipelines using Python and modern cloud-native tools, ensuring low-latency and high availability
• Mentor engineers and foster a high-performance, collaborative engineering culture grounded in technical excellence and curiosity
• Drive cross-functional alignment with product, infrastructure, and research stakeholders, ensuring clarity on progress, goals, and architecture
• Build scalable, performant systems to support model training and inference at scale

Lead Software Engineer

Human Resources

• Serve as a trusted advisor to employees and leaders across the business, advancing a culture of engagement and inclusion while supporting day-to-day HR needs and strategic initiatives.
• Provide coaching and guidance on employee relations, conflict resolution, and workplace matters, ensuring fair and consistent outcomes.
• Act as a trusted partner for employees and managers, balancing advocacy for people with business needs.
• Lead and continuously improve HR programs, with a strong focus on performance management, offboarding, and organizational planning and design.
• Facilitate coaching conversations with managers and employees to strengthen leadership capability, improve team performance, and build a culture of accountability and development.
• Collaborate on organizational planning, change management, and employee engagement initiatives that improve workplace culture.
• Leverage HR data and analytics to identify trends, inform decisions, and recommend actions that improve employee experience and business results.
• Partner with cross-functional HR colleagues to ensure consistent application of policies, compliance, and best practices across the organization.

Senior HR Generalist

Infrastructure Engineer

• Lifecycle Automation: Design and deliver automation to package, test, deploy, and operate infrastructure globally. Build systems that enforce lifecycle patterns and eliminate manual workflows at scale.
• Cloud Infrastructure Engineering: Deploy and manage infrastructure across AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI. Architect for scale, fault tolerance, and operational simplicity with cost, performance, and security as core design constraints.
• Infrastructure-as-Code and CI/CD: Deliver secure, reusable infrastructure using Terraform, Packer, or Chef. Architect CI/CD pipelines using ArgoCD, Tekton, or Jenkins with GitOps workflows that support rapid, safe delivery.
• Containerization and Service Deployment: Design and deploy containerized applications using Docker, Kubernetes, and Rancher. Own service lifecycle patterns including ECS, EKS, and EC2-based deployments.
• Security and Vulnerability Lifecycle Management: Embed secure configuration, patching, and vulnerability remediation into platform automation. Use infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code to enforce drift control and reduce risk at scale.
• AI/ML-Powered Infrastructure Ops: Use AI models and agent-based systems to automate support, detect anomalies, triage alerts, and reduce human effort. Shift operational ownership from engineers to intelligent systems by default.
• Observability and Signal-Driven Automation: Build and operate system observability with tools like ELK and Prometheus. Integrate telemetry with signal-aware automation to trigger remediation, suppression, or escalation based on policy.
• Tooling and Platform Engineering: Build tools and frameworks that improve developer experience, infrastructure safety, and delivery velocity. Write systems that interact with APIs, version control, and internal platforms.
• Documentation and Engineering Hygiene: Maintain high-quality documentation for all infrastructure systems and workflows. Replace tribal knowledge with versioned, discoverable, and actionable references.
• Cross-Team Technical Leadership: Partner with application engineers, SREs, platform teams, and security to deliver shared tooling, drive adoption of standards, and scale infrastructure patterns across teams.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer

Solutions Engineer

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace.
This is an engagement through Upwork’s Hybrid Workforce Solutions (HWS) Team; HWS is a global group of professionals that support Upwork’s business.
Design and develop AI-powered tools and applications to improve productivity across Upwork.
Build and maintain scalable, secure, and reliable server-side services and APIs.
Integrate AI technologies, LLMs, MCP, RAG, and other advanced architectures into workflows and business systems.
Develop and maintain integrations with existing SaaS solutions via their APIs, leveraging integration platforms or custom connectors.
Collaborate with stakeholders to identify pain points, map business processes, and design AI-driven solutions.
Develop end-user applications that make AI capabilities intuitive and accessible to non-technical audiences.
Create and manage ETL processes, pipelines, and data models for AI and analytics workloads.
Prototype and experiment with emerging AI tools to evaluate potential business impact.
Apply modern authentication and security practices, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML.
Ensure operational excellence in the deployment, monitoring, and scaling of AI solutions.

AI Productivity Solutions Engineer

Data Engineer

• As a Lead AI Data Engineer on our Data Platform & Services (DPS) team, you’ll combine advanced data engineering expertise with cutting-edge AI practices to deliver production-grade systems that transform how Upwork uses data. You’ll design and deploy agentic frameworks, natural language querying (NLQ) solutions, and LLM evaluation strategies that make insights accessible at scale. This is a chance to deliver visible impact—accelerating decision-making, enabling self-service analytics, and empowering stakeholders across the company.
• Responsibilities:
• Design and implement scalable agentic frameworks that coordinate multiple AI agents to deliver accurate and reliable outcomes.
• Build and optimize natural language query systems that provide intuitive, compliant, and self-service access to enterprise data.
• Develop and maintain frameworks for evaluating prompts and LLMs, driving measurable improvements in accuracy, resilience, and scalability.
• Partner with data engineering peers to integrate AI orchestration with existing pipelines using Python, SQL, and Snowflake.
• Contribute to AI-powered summarization and explanation tools that enhance reporting, insights, and executive decision-making.
• Collaborate with product, analytics, and business teams to ensure AI solutions align with measurable business goals.
• What it takes to catch our eye:
• Proven success delivering AI-powered data systems in production, including hands-on experience with LLMs and prompt engineering.
• Strong foundation in modern data engineering with expertise in Python, SQL, and platforms such as Snowflake.
• Ability to design agentic orchestration frameworks that scale across diverse business scenarios.
• Collaborative problem-solver with excellent communication skills, able to align stakeholders and create clarity across teams.
• Growth mindset—eager to learn, iterate, and deliver measurable outcomes through applied AI.

Lead Data Engineer

Data Scientist

• Upwork is the world’s human and AI-powered work marketplace connecting businesses with independent talent globally
• Data Science sits within centralized Finance and drives profitable growth and marketplace optimization
• As a Senior Data Scientist, design models that measure and predict customer behavior, lifetime value, and marketplace health
• Tackle complex problems inherent to a global double-sided marketplace and deliver insights to drive product strategy
• Partner with Product, Marketing, and Trust & Safety to surface actionable insights and shape high-impact initiatives
• Own data workflows end-to-end: cleaning, transforming, feature engineering, and schema design using Python, SQL, pandas, and Snowflake
• Build and scale models and analyses using platforms such as AWS SageMaker, Hex, or Snowflake, ensuring repeatable and reliable workflows
• Communicate findings to technical and non-technical audiences to influence strategic decision-making

Senior Data Scientist

User Researcher

• Drive evidence-based decision-making through quantitative research that uncovers deep insights into user behavior, needs, and outcomes
• Partner across Product, Data Science, and Design to ensure decisions are rooted in statistically sound, customer-centric insights
• Design and lead robust quantitative studies (surveys, log data analysis, segmentation, conjoint)
• Integrate quantitative and qualitative data into compelling narratives to guide cross-functional decision-making
• Build and scale research frameworks such as user satisfaction metrics, trust indicators, and skill validation models
• Collaborate to refine hypotheses, align on KPIs, and translate research into measurable outcomes
• Champion research rigor and ethics, ensuring reproducibility, data quality, and responsible handling of user data
• Provide mentorship on quantitative methods to raise the analytical bar of the Research & Insights team
• Contribute to Upwork’s mission to create economic opportunities for professionals worldwide and support a remote-first workforce

Lead User Researcher – Product Insights

• Lead the full product lifecycle for AI and agent-based solutions, from discovery and definition to launch, iteration, and scaling.
• Define and maintain a product roadmap that balances near-term deliverables with long-term innovation.
• Collaborate with engineering and design to scope, build, and deliver features that meet user needs and business goals.
• Partner with research and analytics to uncover opportunities, validate concepts, and guide decision-making using data-driven insights.
• Engage with customers to gather feedback, identify pain points, and translate insights into actionable improvements.
• Stay current on advancements in AI, machine learning, and agentic systems to assess emerging capabilities.
• Align and coordinate cross-functional teams, ensuring timely delivery against success metrics.