Software Engineer

Your Role

Ascend is seeking a Software Engineer to join our team on-site in San Francisco to help expand our core product. As an Engineer at Ascend, you’ll be part of a small but growing team focused on solving complex technical challenges using Ruby. You’ll also interface directly with customers and work cross-functionally to develop new product features, dashboards, and checkout processes—without any layers.

Responsibilities Will Include

Objective #1: In your first 30 days:

• Understand Ascend's platform, product, and customer workflows by collaborating with team members and engaging with customers
• Get up to speed on our prompt engineering and data extraction work, and how testing/monitoring is handled today
• Contribute to user-facing projects
• Partner with product managers and designers to solve customer challenges directly

Objective #2: In your first 60 days:

• Own prompt logic for a slice of the product — resolving data extraction issues and partnering with internal teams on testing and monitoring
• Track extraction accuracy and dig into trends when things go wrong
• Support new customer and organization onboarding through internal tooling improvements
• Take ownership of end-to-end features that process millions in insurance premiums
• Build intuitive UIs to power financial operations
• Maintain high product quality through proactive monitoring and continuous improvements

Objective #3: In your first 90 days and beyond:

• Collaborate with customers to translate their needs into scalable solutions for the multi-trillion-dollar insurance industry
• Build reusable playbooks and prompt strategies that make future automation easier
• Develop the industry's leading point-of-sale system for insurance, enabling seamless payments and improving conversion rates
• Automate back-office tasks with AI, reducing time and improving accuracy for accounting teams
• Help shape technical architecture and processes as the platform scales
• Mentor engineers through thoughtful code reviews and technical guidance

Must Have

• 1-3 years of relevant experience
• Experience working at a growth-stage startup
• Experience with relational databases
• Experience building and scaling consumer products
• A strong desire to learn new skills and solve business problems

Nice to Have

• Familiarity or interest in learning Ruby on Rails and Next.js
• Familiarity with building external APIs and integrations with platforms such as Salesforce
• Experience in building payment, checkout, or insurance products

Tech Stack & Processes

• Ruby on Rails API hosted on Heroku
• Next.js with TypeScript hosted on Vercel
• Tailwind CSS across all frontend development
• Postgres and Redis for storage
• Continuous integration and delivery

Base Salary Range: $160,000–$200,000