Junior Backend Engineer (Europe)
Kalepa
60,000 - 70,000 / year
Need a reasonable accommodation to apply or interview? Contact us.
JobMinglr uses automated technology to recommend jobs based on profile information and job preferences. Match Score does not determine eligibility for a position, prevent a user from viewing or applying to a job, or make hiring decisions on behalf of an employer.
Description
About Kalepa:
Insurance is a $7T global industry built on professional labor: underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution. Kalepa is building AI that can perform that work.
We create professional-grade AI systems for insurers: software that can read, reason, decide, and act inside real workflows and operate over long-time horizons. Kalepa begins by augmenting professionals with the tools to succeed at their jobs. That earns us the right to learn from real decisions, capture decision traces, and automate what can be automated successfully over time.
Our products are already in production with leading insurers, driving measurable outcomes and expanding across functions. The opportunity is far broader than any single workflow: to build the AI operating system for decision-making across insurance. For people who want to work on AI that matters, in a sector where correctness, trust, and real-world impact count, Kalepa is just getting started.
Kalepa is backed by leading investors such as IA Ventures and Inspired Capital, and our team brings experience from Meta, Palantir, Block, Affirm, Google, Amazon, McKinsey, Mastercard, and Uber.
Our Values (This is important):
Our culture is shaped by everyday decisions. Our values help us make them thoughtfully and consistently, especially when tradeoffs are difficult. We learn from mistakes so our good decisions outweigh our bad ones and their benefits compound over time.
- Excellence - We take pride in our craft and expect excellent outcomes in everything we do. We set high standards, verify our work, and own the result. We make deliberate tradeoffs, including rethinking an approach, redoing work, or investing more time.
- Pursuit of the Truth - We seek the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. We question assumptions, give candid feedback, and change our minds when evidence warrants it. We work with customers to understand their challenges and what solving them requires.
- Ensuring Customer Success - We take responsibility for delivering results that matter to our customers. We measure success through improvements in their growth, profitability, and efficiency. We challenge our approach and customers’ requests when necessary, remaining accountable for the outcome.
- First Principles Thinking - We reason from a problem’s underlying facts, objectives, and constraints. We distinguish what is necessary from what is familiar and question assumptions that limit possible solutions. We test our reasoning against reality and address root causes with approaches that scale without unnecessary complexity.
In addition to our NY office, we have remote employees speaking 10+ languages across the globe. But we invest in bringing our people together both for regional meetups and global offsites (2021 - Playa Del Carmen | 2022 - Rome | 2023 - Buenos Aires | 2024 - Lisbon | 2025 - Cartagena | 2026 - Tbilisi).
Kalepa’s culture isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But for the people who are a fit, they can’t imagine working elsewhere.
Salary range: $60k – $70k USD*
We are looking for smart engineers who love to code, seek challenging problems, and appreciate recognition for excellent work.
As an engineer at Kalepa, you'll work on real product and R&D systems at the intersection of software engineering and applied AI. You will contribute to backend services, data and ML pipelines that support our product used by commercial insurance underwriters.
You'll help build and improve systems that ingest, process, and reason over large volumes of structured and unstructured data, including documents, third-party sources, and model outputs. This is hands-on engineering work on problems that matter to the business, with ownership of features end to end.
You'll collaborate closely with experienced full-stack, backend, ML, and platform engineers, and you'll be expected to contribute to how production systems are designed, built, tested, and operated at scale. We're a small team where individual contributions have an outsized impact on both our technology and our business.
You'll Be a Good Fit If You:
- Have approximately 1 year of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production systems
- Have strong fundamentals in at least one programming language and know Python
- Have a degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Enjoy writing code and solving non-trivial technical problems
- Are curious about AI, data, and real-world applications of machine learning
- Take ownership and are comfortable working with ambiguity
- Move fast, learn quickly, and value high standards
- Appreciate direct feedback, meritocracy, and transparency
What We Offer:
- Competitive salary based on experience level*
- Significant equity options package
- Direct work on core systems at a fast-growing AI startup, with a steep learning curve
- Fully remote work from Europe
- Onsite team events in Warsaw and global team offsites
- Real responsibility and production impact from day one
- Mentorship from senior engineers
- 20 days of PTO a year
- Gym, phone, and learning stipend reimbursement
*The salary range listed is an estimate and will vary based on a variety of factors. Final compensation will be determined during the offer stage based on relevant experience, performance during the interview process, and geographic location, and may therefore differ from the posted range.
Benefits
- Competitive salary based on experience level*
- Significant equity options package
- Direct work on core systems at a fast-growing AI startup, with a steep learning curve
- Fully remote work from Europe
- Onsite team events in Warsaw and global team offsites
- Real responsibility and production impact from day one
- Mentorship from senior engineers
- 20 days of PTO a year
- Gym, phone, and learning stipend reimbursement
About this role
Kalepa is building AI systems that automate decision-making work across the insurance industry—underwriting, claims, pricing, and operations. As a Junior Backend Engineer, you'd work on the backend services, data pipelines, and ML infrastructure that power these systems in production at real insurers. The role is hands-on: you'll own features end to end, working with experienced engineers across backend, full-stack, ML, and platform teams to build systems that ingest and reason over large volumes of structured and unstructured data at scale.
This is a good fit if you have around a year of professional software engineering experience, strong fundamentals in at least one language (Python preferred), and a CS or related degree. You should enjoy writing code, be curious about AI and machine learning applications, and be comfortable with ambiguity and moving fast. Kalepa values ownership, direct feedback, and meritocracy—the company emphasizes that its values aren't decorative, and individual contributions have outsized impact in a small team.
The role is fully remote from Europe, with a salary of $60k–$70k USD plus equity. You'll get mentorship from senior engineers, 20 days of PTO, and access to learning stipends. The company also brings the team together for regional meetups and annual global offsites.
How this employer is doing
solid
- Hiring Mentioned
- Recently Raised Funding
In the news
Kalepa hires ex-Palantir leader as product chief, FinTech Global
Pay for this role
$60,000 to $70,000 per year
That is the employer's posted range, and where you land in it is usually decided in one conversation. Before that conversation, run the numbers: analyze an offer for this role.
Before you apply, worth reading
How JobMinglr reads this job
Every listing here is scored against your profile before you apply: skills overlap, experience level, location and work arrangement, each weighted and explained. You see the score and the reasons, not just a list. How the matching works.