Software Engineer (Backend)

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Software Engineer (Backend)

Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Series A (Closing) / Agentic AI + Insurance Infrastructure Startup
Office Type: On-site (5 days/week in San Francisco)
Salary: $180,000 - $260,000 Base
Equity: 0.2% - 0.4% Equity
Bonus: Competitive total compensation package
Visa: H1B Transfers and TN supported (No new H1B sponsorship)
Company Description

Our client is building the agentic operations layer for the Property & Casualty (P&C) insurance industry through AI-powered workflow automation, backend infrastructure, and intelligent operational systems.

The platform helps insurance agencies automate complex manual workflows including renewals, collections, carrier interactions, and operational processes that traditionally rely on fragmented legacy systems.

Founded in 2021 and currently operating as a lean, high-growth startup with approximately 12 employees.

Recently signed a Series A term sheet and is experiencing exceptional growth, achieving approximately 6x revenue growth last year and targeting 10x growth this year.

Backed by leading fintech investors, former Plaid operators, and insurance industry experts with deep domain expertise.

The company is focused on modernizing one of the largest and least digitized industries through AI-native workflow automation.

The product combines:

• Agentic AI systems
• Workflow automation
• Browser automation
• Backend infrastructure
• Carrier integrations
• Data extraction systems
• Insurance operations software
• Enterprise workflow orchestration

Engineering challenges involve building reliable automation on top of fragmented legacy systems, designing scalable backend workflows, integrating disparate data sources, and developing production-grade AI-powered operational infrastructure.

The company is still early enough for engineers to have significant ownership while already demonstrating strong customer demand, revenue growth, and market validation.

The culture values ownership, curiosity, customer obsession, execution speed, and building products that directly impact customer outcomes.
What You Will Do

• Design and ship end-to-end agentic workflows that automate insurance operations
• Build backend systems supporting collections, renewals, carrier integrations, and agency workflows
• Develop reliable integrations with fragmented and low-tech third-party systems
• Create scalable APIs and backend services supporting business-critical workflows
• Build on top of the company's browser automation infrastructure
• Develop automation systems that interact with legacy software environments
• Design and maintain scalable backend architectures
• Build systems that process, transform, and synchronize operational data
• Improve platform reliability, observability, and performance
• Work directly with customers to understand workflow requirements and operational pain points
• Translate customer feedback into product and engineering improvements
• Develop new products and features from concept through production deployment
• Collaborate on system design and architecture decisions
• Own projects end-to-end from design through deployment
• Build infrastructure supporting AI-powered operational workflows
• Help shape product direction alongside founders
• Contribute to long-term backend architecture and engineering practices
• Operate with significant autonomy and ownership

Ideal Candidate Background

• 4-15 years of experience in backend software engineering
• Experience working at an early-stage startup within the last 4 years
• Strong experience building and operating production backend systems
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript or modern backend languages
• Experience building APIs, workflow systems, and backend infrastructure
• Experience integrating with third-party systems and external services
• Experience deploying and maintaining production systems
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and system design skills
• Experience working directly with customers and translating requirements into products
• Experience operating in highly ambiguous startup environments
• Familiarity with AI-powered engineering workflows
• Experience using modern AI coding tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or similar tools
• Strong ownership mentality and ability to drive projects independently
• Comfortable working in a highly autonomous environment
• Interest in insurance, fintech, healthcare, or operationally complex industries
• Strong problem-solving ability and technical curiosity

Strong Signals

• Experience at companies such as Newfront, Archipelago, Modern Treasury, Brex, Plaid, Mercury, Rippling, Retool, Render, Railway, or similar organizations
• Early-stage startup experience with meaningful ownership
• Founding Engineer or early engineering hire experience
• Experience building workflow automation systems
• Strong TypeScript engineering background
• Experience with browser automation, web scraping, or creative data extraction
• Experience integrating legacy enterprise systems
• Experience building products in insurance, fintech, healthcare, or regulated industries
• Experience building agentic AI applications
• Demonstrated ability to ship products from 0-to-1
• Strong customer-facing engineering experience
• Direct interaction with users and stakeholders
• Experience operating in small engineering teams
• Strong startup motivation and long-term commitment history
• Demonstrated curiosity and product thinking
• Experience leveraging AI tools for daily engineering workflows

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary: $180,000 - $260,000
• Competitive equity package (0.2% - 0.4%)
• Opportunity to join a rapidly growing Series A startup
• Significant ownership and influence over product direction
• Direct collaboration with founder and leadership team
• Exposure to AI, automation, and insurance technology
• High autonomy and end-to-end ownership
• Opportunity to help define engineering culture during growth
• Work on meaningful technical problems with direct customer impact
• Relocation support available
• Fast-moving startup culture with strong revenue growth
• Opportunity to shape the future of AI-powered insurance operations

Why Join

This is an opportunity to help build the automation infrastructure layer for one of the largest and most operationally complex industries in the world.

Rather than creating generic AI products, the company is solving mission-critical operational challenges for insurance agencies through workflow automation, backend infrastructure, and agentic AI systems.

You'll work directly with the founder, own meaningful technical projects, and help define the platform that insurance teams rely on to automate business-critical operations.

The role offers a rare combination of backend engineering, workflow automation, AI systems, customer interaction, and startup impact.

If you enjoy building scalable backend systems, integrating messy real-world systems, shipping 0-to-1 products, and operating in high-ownership startup environments, this role offers exceptional scope and career upside.