Lead Full-Stack Engineer

About Us

JAB Institutional

JAB Institutional is a next-generation growth and innovation platform focused on insurance and financial services, launched in September 2026 within JAB Insurance, the global insurance business of JAB Holding Company with more than $25 billion in general account assets. Backed by permanent capital, its flagship business is JAB Re, a global reinsurance and capital solutions business. Alongside it, JAB Institutional is building a planning-led financial advisory and wealth management business to help individual clients with protected accumulation and guaranteed income.

The Platform

JAB is building a new wealth management platform for households with $500k to $2m in investable assets, a large segment underserved by both digital-only advice and traditional wealth management firms.

The platform combines centralized client acquisition, AI-enabled planning technology, and an integrated product shelf spanning investments, guaranteed lifetime income, protection, and lending, delivered through financial advisors. Behind it sit in-house insurance and asset management manufacturing capabilities and a multi-decade investment horizon. The platform enters its pilot phase in January 2027 with its first group of advisors.

The end state is a platform that serves as the client's financial one-stop shop: the place where their entire financial life is managed by their advisor, heavily supported by the platform. It will run the full advisory workflow, including onboarding, account opening, custodian connectivity, trade execution, portfolio management, and rebalancing, with autonomous agents in the loop driving much of the day-to-day support work.

About the Role

This role takes JAB's client experience from working prototype to live product.

JAB builds and runs the client-facing platform itself, while leveraging technology partners for advisor workflow, planning calculations, lead generation, and account data. The Lead Full-Stack Engineer will transform the prototype into a production system, connect it to every partner, and own it once live.

The work is primarily backend focused, but this role ships the entire stack. As the platform's first dedicated engineering hire and sole engineer focused on the client experience, you will work directly with the Lead Product Manager who built the prototype and play a foundational role in the next stage of platform development.

What You'll Do

• Take the working prototype to production, determining what to keep, harden, or rebuild for real households.
• Lead hands-on development of the platform's backend services, data model, business rules, and cloud environment.
• Own the client-facing web application end-to-end and maintain a high-quality production experience.
• Build and manage APIs and data flows that connect the platform to its technology partners.
• Implement sign-in and consent capabilities, the household data model, and end-to-end event tracking to ensure platform data remains complete, portable, and owned by JAB regardless of vendor choices.
• Deploy AI capabilities within defined guardrails, ensuring figures originate from trusted calculation engines and all outputs are checked, traceable, and auditable.
• Automate testing and release processes, using calculation test cases and model validation as release gates.
• Own platform reliability, monitoring, access controls, and data protection, and partner with legal and compliance teams during security and privacy reviews.
• Serve as the technical counterpart to external partners on integration specifications, security reviews, and releases.

What You'll Bring

• 4-7+ years of software engineering experience with a backend-led background; this is a hands-on coding role that remains hands-on as the team grows.
• Full-stack capabilities with strong JavaScript and/or TypeScript experience across server and client environments, and meaningful depth in a modern web framework.
• A track record of taking a prototype to production and operating it successfully, ideally as a lead engineer. Experience building AI-enabled products is a plus.
• Deep integration expertise including REST APIs, event streaming, data pipelines, authentication and single sign-on (SSO), cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), and SQL, ideally within financial services.
• Experience partnering with third-party vendors and making pragmatic build-versus-buy decisions under real-world time constraints.
• Comfort operating as the first engineering hire in an early-stage environment with broad ownership, evolving priorities, and ambitious delivery timelines.
• New York-based preferred, with approximately four days per week in our office at 520 Fifth Avenue.

What We Offer:

• A collaborative, inclusive environment that values authenticity, accountability, and partnership.
• The opportunity to join the company at an exciting stage of growth, where colleagues are empowered to build what's next
• A variable compensation package with a base range of $175,000 to $200,000
• A competitive benefits package including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage; an FSA and 401(k) company match; paid time off; and employer-paid life and disability insurance.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We make hiring decisions based on merit and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected status.

We strive for a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you need an adjustment or accommodation due to a disability or medical condition during the hiring process, please let your recruiter know.