Staff Backend Engineer - Core Product (USA)

Kalepa

21h•Remote

About The Position

Kalepa is building AI systems for insurers to perform tasks like underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution. The company creates professional-grade AI systems that can read, reason, decide, and act within real workflows and operate over long time horizons. Kalepa's products are currently in production with leading insurers, delivering measurable outcomes and expanding across various functions. The ultimate goal is to build an AI operating system for decision-making across the insurance industry. The team is composed of experienced professionals from top tech companies and consulting firms, backed by leading investors. Kalepa emphasizes core principles such as Hustle and Determination, Deliver Customer Impact, Meritocracy, Transparency, and Experiment Relentlessly. The company has a global presence with remote employees and invests in bringing the team together through regional meetups and global offsites.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience.
Embody hustle and grit, with excellence in craft and relentless pursuit of it.
Take full ownership of work and drive projects to completion with minimal oversight.
Communicate proactively, surfacing blockers, asking the right questions, keeping stakeholders in the loop.
Thrive on experimentation: comfortable testing ideas, measuring results, and iterating quickly on problems no one has solved before.
Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving.
Proficiency in Python (main stack), or strong candidates from other OO backgrounds.
Experience with serverless technologies (Lambda, EC2), asynchronous workflows, and cloud environments.
Comfortable with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.

Nice To Haves

Experience with LLMs/generative AI.
Experience with distributed systems.

Responsibilities

Design services, data models, pipelines, and evaluation loops for the Core Backend team.
Work on systems at the center of Kalepa's operations.
Make data more complete, decisions more transparent, and products more valuable.
Take full ownership of work and drive projects to completion with minimal oversight.
Communicate proactively, surfacing blockers, asking the right questions, and keeping stakeholders informed.
Test ideas, measure results, and iterate quickly on complex problems.