> Markdown version of [/jobs/ext/2593079-founding-platform-engineer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/2593079-founding-platform-engineer). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Founding Platform Engineer - **Company:** Cleo Consulting - **Location:** New York, NY, United States - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Backtesting, Large Language Models - **Published:** August 4, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.dice.com/job-detail/e6f0ed5d-d12b-459c-b797-b722c204f720 ## About the Role * Has built a highly configurable, end-to-end internal workbench or platform before, not a customer-facing product. * Systems and architecture background from an AI lab, big tech company, or startup building the workflows and infrastructure around ML products, not necessarily the models themselves. * Comfortable prioritizing architecture and functionality over visual polish, since this is internal tooling. * Enterprise-grade instincts for data-intensive, model-intensive, agent-driven systems. Bonus Skills * Product management experience at a big tech company, or strong product instincts and fluency (confirmed nice-to-have, not required) - this person will take a business requirement directly from the CEO, CTO, and Chief Underwriting Officer and translate it into what gets built. ## Description * Client is an AI-native, full-stack specialty insurance carrier built to operate like a quantitative hedge fund rather than a traditional insurer. Client owns its own balance sheet and organizes around small, autonomous product pods - each pod finds an underserved or entirely new insurance market, builds a differentiated underwriting strategy on proprietary data and ML pricing models, and runs its own book and P&L once cleared through Client's internal research and validation gates. * Client has raised $107M in seed capital. First products are expected to go live in under 90 days, with the business targeting cash-flow positive in year one and the first five products funded off balance sheet. * Founded by Benjamin Markoff (CEO) - who built and exited Founder Shield (insurtech, nine-figure gross written premium, acquired by The Baldwin Group in 2021), the tech-enabled MGA Scale Underwriting, and Broker Buddha (exited January 2023) - and Judah Sosnick (CTO), a founding engineer at an enterprise AI/prediction-modeling startup who went on to build a systematic equities trading platform and served as CTO of an entertainment holding company deploying LLMs and agentic AI. The team will stay intentionally small (tens, not hundreds, of employees), so every hire is load-bearing. About the Role * This role sits above the product pods rather than inside any one of them, owning the internal underwriting operating system that every pod builds on top of - the data backbone, model serving, experimentation and backtesting, underwriting workbenches, and agentic research workflows that have to carry each new insurance opportunity through Client's stages of conviction and validation., * Own and build the central data backbone: ingestion, transformation, and governance across highly varied specialty-insurance data sources. * Build and operate model deployment and serving infrastructure for pricing and underwriting models. * Build product experimentation and backtesting systems that let pods validate a new insurance strategy before committing capital. * Build human and AI-assisted underwriting workbenches used directly by underwriters and pod leads. * Build agentic workflows for research, demand signaling, and distribution validation ahead of a product launch. * Build audit, governance, and compliance flows across the platform. * Sit with the CEO, CTO, and Chief Underwriting Officer to translate business requirements into technical specs, then lead execution. ## Related Videos - [Edit Your Future: Queerverse Radical AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/909-edit-your-future-queerverse-radical-ai) - [Creating Industry ready solutions with LLM Models](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/899-creating-industry-ready-solutions-with-llm-models) - [How to implement convenient Python bindings to C++](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/618-how-to-implement-convenient-python-bindings-to-c) - [Developer Experience, Platform Engineering and AI powered Apps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/990-developer-experience-platform-engineering-and-ai-powered-apps) - [Bringing the power of AI to your application.](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1010-bringing-the-power-of-ai-to-your-application) - [Lies, Damned Lies and Large Language Models](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1231-lies-damned-lies-and-large-language-models) ## Related Articles - [Graph and AI Trends 2026: Why Is AI Running but Not Yet Delivering?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/680-graph-and-ai-trends-2026-why-is-ai-running-but-not-yet-delivering) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [Coffee with Developers - Maria Apazoglou - Making AI understandable for all in production](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/475-coffee-with-developers-maria-apazoglou-making-ai-understandable-for-all-in-production) - [Never delegate the understanding](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/749-never-delegate-the-understanding) - [Trustworthy AI Starts at Deployment: 5 Checks Before You Ship](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/753-trustworthy-ai-starts-at-deployment-5-checks-before-you-ship) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again)