Staff Backend Engineer - Bestow

About Bestow

Life insurance is one of the world's most important products. It's also one of the hardest to build, distribute, and modernize. Bestow exists to change that. Bestow is a leading vertical technology platform serving some of the largest and most innovative life insurers, unabling carriers to launch products in weeks instead of years using AI and automation.

About the Team

The IPC (Implementation & Platform Configuration) Engineering team powers the digital life insurance enrollment experience that Bestow's carrier partners rely on. You'll work alongside Product Managers, Underwriters, and external partners to build and operate modular services written in Python, Go, and Java that sit at the core of Bestow's platform. The team integrates across Bestow's service landscape using gRPC, REST, and async messaging, all running on Kubernetes in Google Cloud Platform.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical architecture for IPC services, making design decisions that balance speed of delivery with long-term maintainability.
• Design, build, and operate backend services using Python + PostgreSQL, Go, and a Java-based Drools rules engine.
• Lead cross-team technical initiatives, coordinating with other Bestow engineering teams to plan and execute integration work across the platform.
• Drive platform capabilities that scale with Bestow's growing partner ecosystem, including new carrier onboardings, product launches, and configuration flexibility.
• Mentor engineers on the team through code review, design review, and pairing.
• Ensure production reliability: define SLOs, improve observability, and share on-call responsibility for IPC workloads.
• Use agentic AI coding tools as a core part of your workflow and help the team adopt effective AI-assisted development practices.
• Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, and status clearly in writing.

Who You Are

• 8+ years of professional backend software development experience, operating at the Staff or Senior level before.
• Strong proficiency in Go and Python; Java experience is a plus.
• Deep experience with distributed systems, microservices, and API design (Protocol Buffers, OpenAPI).
• Comfortable with PostgreSQL or other relational databases at scale.
• Hands-on with cloud infrastructure including Kubernetes, Docker, and GCP.
• Proven track record building, deploying, and troubleshooting production services end-to-end.
• Demonstrated experience with agentic AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) integrated into your daily workflow.

Total Rewards

• Competitive salary and equity based on role.
• Flexible paid time off and parental leave programs.
• 100% paid-premium option for medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Lifestyle stipend to support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
• Flexible work-from-home policy and open to remote.