Senior Backend Engineer,
Underwriting

About the team

Underwriting Engineering builds the core decision systems that power every loan Ahead makes. That includes our risk model, our fraud detection, our identity verification, and the pricing engine that determines each customer's APR. We're 12 engineers reporting to Rina Patel (former Coinbase, Simple), organized in three sub-teams.

You'll join the Decision Platform sub-team, four engineers responsible for the request path from application submission through funding decision. Everything you build gets measured on two things: (1) does it lead to better loan outcomes for customers, and (2) does it help the team ship faster.

What you'll do

• Own major features in our decision platform, from design through production monitoring
• Work with data science to move new risk models from notebook to production, safely
• Reduce median application review time (currently 47 seconds, we want it under 30)
• Build tooling that helps our human underwriters make faster, more consistent judgment calls on borderline applications
• Contribute to on-call rotation (roughly one week every 8 weeks; well-instrumented systems mean it's rarely disruptive)
• Mentor two junior engineers, you don't need prior mentorship experience, but you should be interested in it

What we're looking for

Required:

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience
• Strong Python or Go (we use both; you don't need to be fluent in both)
• Experience running production services at meaningful scale (>1M requests/day)
• Comfortable with Postgres or another mature RDBMS
• Clear communication in writing, async is the default here

Nice to have (not required):

• Previous experience in consumer finance, lending, or regulated industries
• Experience shipping ML models to production
• Exposure to fraud detection or anti-abuse work
• Prior remote-first work experience

What we don't care about: fancy schools, big-name past employers, specific years of experience within a range, or whether you've held the exact same title before. We care about what you can build and how you communicate.

Interview process

Our full process takes about 3 weeks:

• Week 1: 30-minute intro call with Rina, hiring manager. Mostly you asking questions.
• Week 2: Take-home coding exercise (paid, ~4 hours, we send it Monday and want it back Friday). Then a 90-minute walk-through with two engineers on the team.
• Week 3: One 60-minute system design conversation + one 45-minute values conversation with Kwame (CTO). Decision within 5 business days.

No LeetCode. No whiteboard puzzles. No "reverse a linked list."

What we offer, specifically

Beyond the salary range at the top of this page:

• ESOP shares vested over 4 years (equity in an actual profitable, growing company)
• 100% covered health, dental, vision for you and dependents
• Unlimited PTO with a 3-week minimum, we track that you actually take it
• 6% 401(k) match, vested immediately
• 16 weeks of parental leave, full pay
• $3,000/year learning budget
• $2,000 home office setup stipend
• 4-day work weeks June through August (Fridays off, full pay)
• Quarterly team meetups in Chicago, Austin, or Dover

Full details on the Careers page.