Staff Backend Engineer – Submission Processing

Kalepa

Staff engineer on the Submission Processing team at Kalepa handling end-to-end AI and backend systems development and contributing to the technical direction in a collaborative environment.

Posted 7/8/2026full-timeNew York City • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $230,000 - $290,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudEC2PostgresPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Work at the intersection of AI and backend engineering and have major ownership and agency: design the systems, make architectural calls under ambiguity, and play a key role in setting the technical direction for the team.
Building and scaling LLM-based systems that process billions of highly unstructured data points on a daily basis, extract precise information, and surface insights that insurers rely on for high-stakes decisions.
Collaborate with a small team where individual contributions have an outsized impact on both our technology and our business.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Have 8+ years of software engineering experience.
Embody hustle and grit, you're excellent at your craft and relentless in pursuing it.
Take full ownership of your 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: you're comfortable testing ideas, measuring results, and iterating quickly on problems no one has solved before.
Have strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving.
Have worked with LLMs in production and understand what it takes to deploy them at scale.
Have experience with AWS and serverless technologies (Lambda, EC2), asynchronous workflows, and cloud environments.
Know Python (our main stack), though we’re open to strong candidates from other OO backgrounds.
Are comfortable with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.
Are excited by problems others are struggling with.
Bonus: experience with document pipelines and processing large amounts of data

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive salary (based on experience level)*
Significant equity options package.
Work with an ambitious, smart, global, and fun team to transform a $7T global industry.
20 days of PTO a year.
Global team offsites.
100% covered PPO medical, 100% covered vision and dental for individuals and families.
Healthy living/gym stipend. Mobile phone bill stipend.
Continuing education credits.
401(k) plan with employer contribution (regardless of employee contribution)

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Software EngineeringSystem DesignDebuggingProblem-SolvingPythonLLM DeploymentRelational DatabasesPostgreSQLAsynchronous WorkflowsCloud Environments

Soft Skills

OwnershipProactive CommunicationExperimentationCollaborationGrit