Software Engineer

Ascend; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% health premiums covered

401(k) with employer matching

Promotions from within

Unlimited PTO

Company-paid commuter benefits

Parental and family leave

Dog-friendly office

Job summary

Ascend is seeking a Software Engineer to join our on-site team in San Francisco to help expand our core product. As an Engineer at Ascend, you’ll be part of a small but growing team focused on solving complex technical challenges using Ruby.

You’ll also interface directly with customers and work cross‑functionally to develop new product features, dashboards, and checkout processes—without any layers. Ascend is a growing insurance fintech startup; you’ll collaborate with product managers and

Qualifications

• 1–3 years of relevant experience.
• Experience at a growth-stage startup.
• Experience with relational databases.
• Experience building and scaling consumer products.
• Strong desire to learn new skills and solve business problems.

Responsibilities

• Own prompt logic for a slice of the product and resolve data extraction issues.
• Track extraction accuracy and analyze trends when issues occur.
• Support onboarding through internal tooling improvements.
• Own end-to-end features processing millions in insurance premiums.
• Build intuitive UIs to power financial operations.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and guidance.

Skills

Startup experience

Relational databases

Consumer products

Learning mindset

Growth-stage experience

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redis

Ruby on Rails

Next.js

TypeScript

Tailwind CSS

Heroku

Vercel

Salesforce API

Job description

Insurance is a $10T industry still running on PDFs, email threads, and manual reconciliation. Ascend is changing that. We built the first and only complete financial operations platform purpose‑built for insurance — combining AI‑powered accounting automation, payments, and premium financing in a single vertically integrated solution. In five years, we've become the market leader: over 4,000 businesses, including more than half of the 50 largest brokers in the country, trust Ascend to bring clarity to complex accounting operations — from collection to close.

How We Do It

Ascend automates the financial operations that insurers, MGAs, and agencies run every day — and embeds directly into the transactions where money actually moves.

AI is driving the cost of software toward zero. The companies that win won’t just sell tools — they’ll capture value at the point of the transaction itself. Ascend is built for exactly that moment. Our customers don’t just adopt software; they unlock measurable efficiency with a proven 5–7x return on investment.

Our 70+ person team, based in San Francisco and Columbus, brings together deep expertise in insurance, fintech, and AI to build infrastructure the industry has never had.

Why We Do It

The insurance industry intermediates trillions of dollars — and almost none of that infrastructure was built for the modern era. Legacy systems aren’t just inefficient; they’re a ceiling on what the industry can become.

Ascend’s mission is to become the leading financial automation platform for insurance by 2030 — powering the financial operations of the entire industry and transforming the way trillions of dollars move. We’re not building another point solution. We’re building the financial backbone of insurance.

Your Role

Ascend is seeking a Software Engineer to join our team on‑site in San Francisco to help expand our core product. As an Engineer at Ascend, you’ll be part of a small but growing team focused on solving complex technical challenges using Ruby. You’ll also interface directly with customers and work cross‑functionally to develop new product features, dashboards, and checkout processes—without any layers.

Responsibilities

Objective #1: In your first 30 days:

• Understand Ascend’s platform, product, and customer workflows by collaborating with team members and engaging with customers
• Get up to speed on our prompt engineering and data extraction work, and how testing/monitoring is handled today
• Contribute to user‑facing projects
• Partner with product managers and designers to solve customer challenges directly

Objective #2: In your first 60 days:

• Own prompt logic for a slice of the product — resolving data extraction issues and partnering with internal teams on testing and monitoring
• Track extraction accuracy and dig into trends when things go wrong
• Support new customer and organization onboarding through internal tooling improvements
• Take ownership of end‑to‑end features that process millions in insurance premiums
• Build intuitive UIs to power financial operations
• Maintain high product quality through proactive monitoring and continuous improvements

Objective #3: In your first 90 days and beyond:

• Collaborate with customers to translate their needs into scalable solutions for the multi‑trillion‑dollar insurance industry
• Build reusable playbooks and prompt strategies that make future automation easier
• Develop the industry’s leading point‑of‑sale system for insurance, enabling seamless payments and improving conversion rates
• Automate back‑office tasks with AI, reducing time and improving accuracy for accounting teams
• Help shape technical architecture and processes as the platform scales
• Mentor engineers through thoughtful code reviews and technical guidance

Must Have

• 1–3 years of relevant experience
• Experience working at a growth‑stage startup
• Experience with relational databases
• Experience building and scaling consumer products
• A strong desire to learn new skills and solve business problems

Nice to Have

• Familiarity or interest in learning Ruby on Rails and Next.js
• Familiarity with building external APIs and integrations with platforms such as Salesforce
• Experience in building payment, checkout, or insurance products
• Ruby on Rails API hosted on Heroku
• Next.js with TypeScript hosted on Vercel
• Tailwind CSS across all frontend development
• Postgres and Redis for storage
• Continuous integration and delivery

Base Salary Range: $140,000–$175,000

Office and Work Environment

All roles at Ascend are 5 days a week onsite at our beautiful office in SoMa!

• 100% health premiums covered for you and your dependents
• 401(k) with employer matching options
• A fast‑growing team with an emphasis on promoting from within – 80% of all hires in the last 12 months have already been promoted!
• Unlimited PTO
• Company‑paid commuter benefits
• Parental and family leave
• Dog‑friendly office!

We are committed to equal opportunity employment and embrace diversity within our organization. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates to apply even if their experience doesn’t precisely match this opportunity. We value diversity and are dedicated to equal opportunity employment.