About Instnt
Fraud is inevitable. Fraud loss isn’t.
At Instnt, we’re not just optimizing a legacy identity solution—we’re inventing a new insurance category. We are the first to seamlessly merge cutting-edge AI-powered identity fraud protection with AM Best A-rated insurance. The result? Our clients stop watching fraud eat their margins and shift the entire risk off their books with a fixed premium and a 30-day reimbursement guarantee.

The product is revolutionary, but the team is the engine of disruption. Our CEO, a proven serial entrepreneur behind multiple successful companies, including a unicorn, has built a leadership bench of seasoned experts. For you, this means working alongside industry leaders and builders who know how to scale intelligently. We’re at an inflection point—not merely growing, but leading the market.

The Role

We are looking for a senior, deeply hands-on full stack engineer and systems optimizer who can quickly get under the hood of a live production environment, assess the current architecture, and identify the highest-leverage opportunities to improve performance, scalability, and engineering efficiency. This is not a role for someone who wants clean greenfield work only. We need an experienced builder who is energized by improving systems, tackling technical debt, scaling, and troubleshooting production issues, and knows how to turn ambiguity into a clear path forward.

You will be tasked with helping us audit current system,  develop a clear point of view on architectural opportunities, workflow bottlenecks, and technical debt, and then work with the team to  establish a thoughtful execution plan that prioritizes the most critical roadmap and platform initiatives in the right sequence. You will work closely with contractors, breaking large projects into clear workstreams, delegating specific execution where needed, while still remaining the technical owner who can jump into the code, unblock progress, and ensure the right long-term decisions are being made.

This role is ideal for someone who loves going from system assessment → prioritization → hands-on optimization → long-term hardening and scale.

New York City: $180,000 to $220,000

What You’ll Do

• Conduct a technical audit of the current platform, including frontend, backend, infrastructure, workflows, performance, and reliability risks.
• Assess the existing stack and identify the highest-impact opportunities to improve scalability, reliability, latency, and developer velocity across the platform.
• Create a clear and pragmatic execution roadmap, sequencing what should be tackled first, second, and third across architecture, workflows, and product-critical initiatives.
• Remain deeply hands-on in coding, refactoring, and optimization work across frontend, backend, APIs, databases, and infrastructure layers.
• Partner closely with product and data science to translate business, model, and customer requirements into elegant production systems.
• Advise on pragmatic architectural decisions that balance startup speed with long-term scalability.
• Raise the engineering bar through strong code quality, thoughtful reviews, and hands-on mentorship of engineers and contractors.
• Leverage AI-powered development tools and modern engineering workflows to increase speed and quality.

Who You Are

• You are at your best when stepping into complex systems and quickly developing clarity on where optimization, simplification, and architectural improvements will have the greatest impact.
• You have significant experience performing technical audits, architecture reviews, production debugging, and system remediation in startup or high-growth environments.
• You are deeply hands-on and still love coding. You are excited to personally fix issues, improve architecture, and stabilize systems before scaling them.
• You know how to direct contractors and external engineers with precision, translating broad technical problems into clearly scoped execution tasks.
• You are highly fluent in Python and AWS cloud-native architectures. Familiarity with React, TypeScript, and SQL is a plus.
• You have strong judgment around what needs an immediate tactical fix versus what needs a deeper architectural rebuild.
• You thrive in startup ambiguity, move fast, and don’t need perfect documentation to figure out how things work.
• Bonus points: experience in FinTech, KYC, fraud systems, onboarding workflows, workflow tooling, or real-time SaaS platforms.

About Instnt
Fraud is inevitable. Fraud loss isn’t.
At Instnt, we’re not just optimizing a legacy identity solution—we’re inventing a new insurance category. We are the first to seamlessly merge cutting-edge AI-powered identity fraud detection with AM Best A-rated insurance. The result? Our clients stop watching fraud eat their margins and shift the entire risk off their books with a fixed premium and a 30-day reimbursement guarantee.

The service is revolutionary, but the team is the engine of disruption. Our CEO, a proven serial entrepreneur behind multiple successful companies, including a unicorn, has built a leadership bench of seasoned experts. For you, this means working alongside industry leaders and builders who know how to scale intelligently. We’re at an inflection point—not merely growing, but leading the market.

The Role

We are seeking a highly technical, hands-on leader who is still close to the code, but also brings the vision and experience to build and scale a strong engineering team, and the ability to communicate that vision clearly across the company. You’ll be both a player and coach, rolling up your sleeves to write code and architect systems, while also setting direction for a growing engineering team. In this role you will report directly to our CEO.

You’ll work closely with product and data science to design, deliver, and scale a real-time SaaS onboarding platform, ensuring performance, security, and reliability at scale. This is an opportunity to join at a critical inflection point, help shape the engineering culture from the ground up, and grow into a senior leadership role as the company scales.

This role is hybrid lite. We value in-person collaboration and would like team members to join us in our NYC office on a regular cadence, but there is no strict requirement. Below, we have reflected the base salary range we would offer for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to experience and performance. The range listed is just one component of Instnt’s total compensation package for employees, with equity being a significant part of the overall offer.

New York City: $180,000 to $220,000

What You’ll Do

• Own the strategic vision for product architecture and technical roadmap, while also being hands-on in building and coding. Deliver a scalable, high-performance SaaS platform.
• Partner with product and data science leaders to align architecture with business and customer needs.
• Own performance testing, load testing, and optimization of high-throughput distributed systems.
• Implement best-in-class engineering practices while keeping processes lightweight and startup-friendly.
• Guide, mentor, and scale a small but growing engineering team (currently includes FTE and contractors).
• Evaluate and implement AI and developer tools that increase velocity and quality across engineering.
• Represent engineering with prospects and customers, ensuring technical credibility and clarity.

Who You Are

• You are a strong leader who brings a rare blend of hands-on technical depth and architectural vision, with the proven experience of building and scaling kick-ass engineering teams.
• You have startup experience. You know how to thrive in ambiguity, move fast, stay nimble, and adapt as priorities shift. You get energy from building things at rapid speed and finding creative ways forward.
• You are fluent in the tools of the trade. Python is second nature to you, and you’re confident working with AWS Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, and SQL (Postgres/Redshift) to design and scale reliable systems.
• You are obsessed with performance. Designing, testing, and optimizing distributed systems to make them faster, stronger, and more resilient is your craft.
• You are a connector. You know how to translate big ideas into clear technical direction, bridging engineers, product, and data science—and making sure everyone’s aligned.
• Bonus points: You have Experience in FinTech or high-scale, real-time SaaS products gives you an extra edge.