Founding Engineer: Build AI-Driven Insurance Platform

Fernstone (YC F25); New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Fernstone, an NYC-based AI-driven insurance startup, is hiring a founding engineer to join as the second engineering hire. You’ll own critical systems, shape the technical direction, and work directly with operators to build a product that moves insurance faster and with better terms.

You’ll ship end-to-end features, design across the stack, and develop reliable AI-enabled workflows. If you’re excited by ambiguity and building in a hands-on, product-focused environment, join us in the office.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience.
• Shipped and maintained production software that users depend on.
• Able to take ambiguous business problems and turn them into focused solutions.
• Strong backend and relational database fundamentals; comfortable building a polished frontend.
• Practical experience building with language models and evaluating their output.
• Experience using AI development tools and taking ownership for the code shipped.

Responsibilities

• Own outcomes: partner with operations to learn how insurance work gets done and decide what to build.
• Build across the stack: interface, application logic, data model, and infrastructure.
• Engineer for reliability: create workflows where accuracy matters and events unfold over days or weeks.
• Develop practical AI: build systems that interpret information and automate multi-step work.

Skills

Backend development

Frontend development

Relational databases

AI/ML tools

Language models

Production software

Problem solving

Code review & debugging

Job description

Fernstone, an NYC-based AI-driven insurance startup, is hiring a founding engineer to join as the second engineering hire. You’ll own critical systems, shape the technical direction, and work directly with operators to build a product that moves insurance faster and with better terms.

You’ll ship end-to-end features, design across the stack, and develop reliable AI-enabled workflows. If you’re excited by ambiguity and building in a hands-on, product-focused environment, join us in the office.