Software Engineer, Data Platform; Strong Clojure

Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform About Ladder

We saw a problem within the life insurance industry: getting covered took too long, involved too much paperwork, and required too many in-person meetings with sales agents. Having lost his father at a young age, our CEO, Jamie, was determined to make it easier for people to get the coverage they needed to provide for their families. So, we got to work.

We developed a method of real-time underwriting leveraging AI and, in doing so, reduced the months-long process of applying for life insurance to minutes. Our digital experience is quick (instant decisions!), loved by users (check out our Trustpilot or Google reviews) and prolific ($74 billion+ in coverage provided).

We are looking for a powerhouse Staff Software Engineer with battle-tested experience building ETL pipelines at massive scale. You will take ownership of our toughest backend and data plumbing challenges, bridging our transactional systems (Datomic) with our analytical and streaming infrastructure (Big Query, Kafka, Flink, DBT) to architect resilient, elegant, and high-volume data pipelines. If you dream in immutable data structures and love using functional programming to untangle architectural knots, we need you.

The ideal candidate brings demonstrated experience in software engineering, leadership maturity and a deep understanding of engineering infrastructure.
This is a remote role based in one of the 22 States Ladder is currently hiring in - AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, KS, MA, MD, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, TX, VA, WA, WI. Please note, Ladder is not currently sponsoring or transferring OPT or H1-B visa's.

As a senior technical leader on the team, you won't just be writing code, you'll be shaping our entire data strategy. You will:

• Architect and Build: Design, deploy, and scale robust data pipelines that reliably move and transform data between Datomic, Kafka, and Big Query.
• Tame the Chaos: Build elegant, fault-tolerant ETL systems leveraging frameworks like DBT to ingest, sanitize, and normalize messy, unstructured data from dozens of third-party APIs and legacy vendors.
• Master the Stream: Evolve our event-driven architecture, optimizing streaming performance (Kafka/BEAM) to support real-time machine learning models
• Drive Technical Excellence: Act as a force multiplier for the engineering team. You'll set standards for backend architecture in Clojure, mentor peers, and make high-stakes technical decisions that scale with our rapid growth.
• Bridge the Gap: Partner closely with Data Science, Product and Business Development teams to ensure our data infrastructure proactively serves the evolving needs of the business.

• A seasoned technical leader: You bring 8+ years of rigorous software or data engineering experience to the table, backed by a strong academic foundation (BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field). You have a proven track record operating at a Staff or Principal level, where you don't just write code - you define technical strategy and mentor teams.
• A Clojure authority: You have deep, production-grade experience natively architecting complex backend systems in Clojure and the JVM. Functional programming and immutable data structures aren't just concepts to you; they are your preferred tools for building highly reliable software.
• A medallion architect: You have 4+ battle-tested years designing high-volume ETL/ELT pipelines at massive scale. You are an expert at structuring data lakes through Raw/Bronze, Cleansed/Silver, and Curated/Gold layers, and you rely on advanced dbt modeling to ensure pristine data quality.
• A modern data stack master: You have extensive, hands-on experience operating cloud data warehouses (specifically Big Query), streaming infrastructure (Kafka), and processing frameworks (Apache Beam, Flink, or Spark). Wrangling messy, unstructured third-party API data into clean, ready-to-query models is second nature to you.
• An autonomous systems thinker: You thrive in ambiguity and deeply understand the harsh realities of distributed systems. You don't just patch bugs; you design elegant, event-driven…