Founding Software Engineer

Founding Full Stack Engineer

San Francisco, CA (onsite)

Up to $280K + Equity

My client is YC backed InsureTech start up and is developing AI solutions for the insurance industry, focusing on automating manual and error-prone workflows.

The company is currently working with a top 10 insurance carrier, aiming to convert a pilot into a significant contract. They recently raised $10 million, led by Y Combinator, and is considered pre-revenue with plans for rapid scaling.

We're looking for a full-stack engineer with 2+ years of experience who leverages AI deeply and is excited about the evolving role of engineers as full-stack problem solvers — not just code writers. You should be comfortable with ambiguity, working directly with enterprise customers, and figuring out what "good" looks like in specialized domains where the answer isn't obvious. We care more about what you've done than years of experience — you should have shipped real things and done something genuinely hard, whether that's an open source project with real users, an early startup, a competitive athletic career, or something else entirely. Experience in insurance, fintech, healthcare, legal, or other regulated B2B industries is a meaningful plus.

Requirements:

• 2+ years of experience in full- stack engineering. Proficiency in modern backend languages, preferably TypeScript.
• Experience at an early- stage or high- growth startup.
• Built and shipped production LLM or AI agent systems.
• Experience in a regulated or data- intensive domain: insurance, fintech, healthtech, legaltech
• CS degree or STEM equivalent — no degree required if work history is strong.
• Actively uses agentic engineering tools (e. g. Claude Code, Cursor) in day- to- day workflow.
• LLM proficiency: prompt engineering, eval design, context construction, agentic workflow design.
• Articulate and precise communicator who can clearly articulate what they want and why they're looking.
• Intellectually curious and product- minded — thinks about how users interact with what they build.
• Must work in- person 5- days a week in Presidio, San Francisco.
• Comfortable working directly with customers and open to occasional travel to customer sites.

Responsibilities

• Build new AI agents and product features from scratch for a platform serving top-10 insurance carriers
• Own entire product modules end-to-end — from customer discovery and domain research to shipping production-ready AI systems
• Work directly with enterprise customers on-site to deeply understand their workflows, unstructured data, and pain points
• Design and iterate on eval frameworks to ensure AI agents produce accurate, useful outputs in highly specialized domains
• Build backends that ingest, structure, and reason over large volumes of unstructured data using LLMs
• Operate as a full-stack problem solver — writing code, conducting user research, self-educating on domain topics, and doing whatever it takes to make customers successful

Why candidates should join

• Massive greenfield market: Insurance is one of the largest industries globally and still runs on manual workflows, outsourced labor, and 20-year-old software. Adaptional is building the AI transformation layer for insurance teams — the LLM unlock is real and early, and they're one of the first credible technical teams to go after it.
• Strong funding: $10M seed led by Y Combinator — one of the largest insurtech seeds to date. Raised at a $60M valuation with runway to execute.
• Real traction: Just secured a pilot with a top-10 U.S. carrier (a household name) that could convert into a 7-figure contract. Clear product direction, aggressive timelines, and a lot to build.
• Founders who've done it before: Co-founder Kevin built and exited a prior VC-backed insurance startup, then served as Director of Engineering at Clipboard Health — scaling it from $10M to $150M ARR in two years. Deep technical chops and firsthand domain credibility.

Why this Role?

• True founding engineer: You're the 3rd engineer. You'll shape the technical foundation and culture from day one — and there's a real path to Head of Engineering as the team scales.
• Palantir-style motion: Forward-deployed engineering embedded with major enterprise customers. You'll go on-site, talk directly to end users, and own agent design end-to-end — from customer discovery to production.
• AI-native by default: This isn't traditional software development. You'll build bespoke AI agents for complex, specialized insurance workflows — evals, unstructured data ingestion, and agentic systems are the core of the work.
• Comp: $180K–$280K base + competitive early-stage equity at a $60M valuation. Relocation support available.