Staff Backend Engineer

WhyHireWrong?; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

WhyHireWrong? is seeking strong backend engineers to build reliable systems around high-value data. Join the Core Backend team to design services, data models, pipelines, and evaluation loops that enable faster, more explainable decisions.

You will be part of a high-ownership team responsible for business-critical infrastructure, making data more complete and decisions more transparent across products.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Full ownership of your work with minimal oversight.
• Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging and problem-solving.
• Proficiency in Python; OO background acceptable.
• Experience with serverless technologies (Lambda, EC2) and cloud environments.
• Comfort with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL.
• Proactive communication and collaboration with stakeholders.
• Nice to have experience with LLMs/generative AI and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Design services, data models, pipelines, and evaluation loops for reliable systems.
• Work on core backend infrastructure to centralize business data.
• Improve data quality and transparency of decisions across products.
• Own projects end-to-end with accountable delivery.

Skills

Software engineering

System design

Python

Serverless

PostgreSQL

Debugging

Communication

LLMs/AI

Tools

AWS Lambda

AWS EC2

Job description

About the company

Insurance is a $7T global industry built on professional labor: underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution. We're building AI that can perform that work - professional-grade systems for insurers that read, reason, decide, and act inside real workflows over long time horizons.

We start by augmenting professionals with the tools to succeed at their jobs. That earns us the right to learn from real decisions, capture decision traces, and automate what can be automated successfully over time.

Our products are already in production with leading insurers, driving measurable outcomes and expanding across functions. The opportunity is far broader than any single workflow - we're building the AI operating system for decision-making across insurance.

We're backed by leading investors, and our team brings experience from Facebook, Palantir, Google, Amazon, McKinsey, Mastercard, and Uber.

The role

We're looking for strong backend engineers who love building reliable systems around fragmented, high-value data. As part of the Core Backend team, you'll work on the systems at the center of the business - designing services, data models, pipelines, and evaluation loops. The goal isn't just cleaner data, but an intelligence layer that makes better, faster, and more explainable decisions.

You'll join a high-ownership team responsible for some of the company's most business-critical infrastructure. Your work will make our data more complete, our decisions more transparent, and our products even more valuable.

What you bring

• 8+ years of software engineering experience

• Hustle and grit - excellent at your craft and relentless in pursuing it

• Full ownership of your work, driving projects to completion with minimal oversight

• Proactive communication - surfacing blockers, asking the right questions, keeping stakeholders in the loop

• Comfort with experimentation - testing ideas, measuring results, iterating quickly on problems no one has solved before

• Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving

• Python (our main stack), though we're open to strong candidates from other OO backgrounds

• Experience with serverless technologies (Lambda, EC2), asynchronous workflows, and cloud environments

• Comfort with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL

Bonus:experience with LLMs/generative AI, distributed systems

What you'll get

• Competitive salary based on experience level

• Significant equity options package

• Work with an ambitious, smart, global, and fun team transforming a $7T global industry

• 20 days of PTO a year

• Global team offsites

• Healthy living/gym stipend, mobile phone bill stipend

• Continuing education credits

Values

• Hustle and Determination- we take full ownership of our craft and relentlessly pursue excellence with speed and determination

• Deliver Customer Impact- every decision is measured against whether it helps insurers make better decisions

• Meritocracy- a high bar, with excellence rewarded by rapid growth

• Transparency- honest, direct communication; we challenge ideas, not people

• Experiment Relentlessly- test quickly, measure rigorously, iterate until we find the path forward