Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure

We saw a problem within the life insurance industry: getting covered took too long, involved too much paperwork, and required too many in-person meetings with sales agents. Having lost his father at a young age, our CEO, Jamie, was determined to make it easier for people to get the coverage they needed to provide for their families. So, we got to work. We developed a method of real-time underwriting leveraging AI and, in doing so, reduced the months-long process of applying for life insurance to minutes. Our digital experience is quick (instant decisions!), loved by users (check out our Trustpilot or Google reviews) and prolific ($74 billion+ in coverage provided).

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to accelerate developer productivity across Ladder's engineering organization. You'll own and modernize our CI/CD pipelines, build systems, and developer tooling -  while also contributing to the reliability of our cloud infrastructure and data platform. 

The ideal candidate brings demonstrated experience in software engineering, leadership maturity and a deep understanding of  engineering infrastructure.  This is a remote role based in one of the 22 States Ladder is currently hiring in - AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, KS, MA, MD, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, TX, VA, WA, WI.  Please note, Ladder is not currently sponsoring or transferring OPT or H1-B visa's.

As a senior engineer on the team, you won't just be writing code, you'll be shaping our platform strategy. You will:

• Improve developer velocity across the engineering organization. You'll measure and optimize the inner loop -  how long it takes an engineer to go from code change to confident production deployment. This includes build times, test parallelization, deployment rollout speed, and the tooling engineers interact with every day.
• Shape the architecture of Ladder's production infrastructure. You'll evaluate trade-offs and make high-impact technical decisions — like whether to replace custom monitoring tooling with native cloud provider integrations, or redesign how we rebuild data pipelines when upstream logic changes. You'll be the person who sees the big picture across systems and decides where to invest engineering effort.

• Participate in incident response for infrastructure, run retrospectives, and help drive follow-through on fixes as part of the team.

• Systematically pay down infrastructure tech debt. You'll partner with your team to identify legacy systems that have been superseded by better alternatives and build a roadmap to retire them — migrating from bespoke systems to native integrations, cleaning up remnants of past cloud migrations, and upgrading components that have drifted behind. 
• You'll raise the engineering bar through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance -  not through formal management, but through the quality and clarity of your technical work.

• A functional programming expert: You have deep production experience with Clojure or another functional language and are excited to work in a Clojure-and-JVM environment. Prior Clojure experience is a strong plus.
• An expert with CI/CD and Build pipelines: You have battle-tested experience profiling and optimizing CI/CD pipelines for large codebases, possess intricate knowledge of monorepo build tools like Bazel and Buck, and know how to solve issues related to build and test slowness.
• An Infrastructure enthusiast: You have extensive experience with cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes, Terraform, Datomic, BigQuery and cloud platforms like GCP.
• A Systems Thinker: You possess a deep understanding of software design and architecture. You don't just patch bugs; you design elegant systems that prevent entire classes of problems.
• A Self Starter: You thrive in ambiguity. You can take a high-level, messy business problem, define the technical constraints, and drive the solution from ideation to deployment.

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years in infrastructure/platform roles
• BS, MS in Computer Science or related technical field a strong plus
• Must-have: Kubernetes, GCP (or equivalent cloud), CI/CD pipeline design, Docker, infrastructure-as-code, JVM operational experience, BigQuery, Kafka
• Strong plus: Clojure, Datomic, Datadog or similar observability platform, monorepo build tools (Buck, Bazel)
• Nice-to-have: Go, Python, Beam/Dataflow, 

Whether you work in our beautiful office in Palo Alto or remotely, Ladder is highly collaborative and fun. To support you in your role, we offer fantastic perks and benefits that reflect our mission of care and support, including:

• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage | We offer competitive healthcare,dental and vision plans for you and your family.
• Flexible paid time off | Take the time that you need to rest and recharge, including our week-long winter holiday closure. 
• Stock options | We offer competitive stock option packages to participate in the success of building Ladder
• A rewarding 401k match program | We'll match up to 4% of your contributions as you save for your retirement goals.
• Ladder Fit Program | Your health matters. That’s why Ladder provides a monthly reimbursement for wellness-related expenses.
• Commuter benefits | When you work from the office, you will receive pre-tax 
• benefits for your commute and free parking.
• A stocked, beautiful new office | Located in downtown Palo Alto, our office was specifically designed to accommodate all working styles. We've invested in technology to support our hybrid team, plus we provide office snacks and daily catered lunches so that team members can work well and have fun together.
• Paid parental leave | We think it's crucial that new parents have time to adjust to their new lives without worrying about work, so we provide all parents inclusive of birthing, adoption, or fostering ten weeks of paid baby bonding.
• Work-from-home flexibility and support | We recognize that everyone's homelife is different and support remote and hybrid work. Upon joining, we provide a one-time remote office stipend for all team members and then a monthly stipend to cover WFH costs such as the internet.
• Fun company-wide events | Whether we work locally or remotely, we genuinely enjoy spending time together. That’s why we plan fun virtual and in-person events to let loose and laugh.

The base pay range targeted for this position is $145,000 - $192,000. This role is eligible for equity and benefits as shared above. Base pay is determined by market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Ladder is building a diverse team of talented and enthusiastic people. We are an equal opportunity workplace. At Ladder, differences are celebrated and supported to benefit our people, product, and community. Let us know why you're interested in this position and what unique contributions you can make to the Ladder team. We look forward to hearing from you.

Research shows that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don't apply for roles if they don't meet all the criteria – unlike majority candidates meeting significantly fewer requirements. We strongly encourage you to apply if you’re interested: we'd love to know how you can elevate our team with your unique experience!

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