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Founding Engineer

Fernstone

Company websitefernstone.com (Fernstone, opens in new tab)

Base salary $120K  to $180K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in New York City, NY

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  • LocationNew York City, NY
  • WorkplaceOn-site
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (4 min ago) · observed since

About this job

About Fernstone:

Fernstone is building a new kind of insurance company: we combine AI with expert advisors to place insurance faster and at better terms.

We think AI will fundamentally reshape how insurance is bought and sold – and the new winners in this $1T category will compete directly with legacy insurers instead of selling software to them.

We’ve raised $3M from Y Combinator and other notable investors, and have grown from 0 to 500+ customers since launching at the start of the year.

Fernstone was founded by James (BCG, Traba, UChicago), and Bryant (Google, SentiLink, Vanderbilt). We work in-person in our NYC office.

The role:

As founding engineer (and engineering hire #2), you’ll have a substantial role in building our product. You’ll work directly with the operators using your product, own critical systems across the stack, and help set the technical direction of the company. Your work will have a direct impact on how we operate, serve customers, and grow.

What you’ll work on:

  • Own outcomes: partner with our operations team to learn how insurance work gets done, identify the biggest opportunities, and decide what to build.

  • Build across the stack: Design and build complete features across the interface, application logic, data model, and infrastructure.

  • Engineer for the real world: Create reliable workflows where accuracy matters, outside systems fail, and events may unfold over days or weeks

  • Develop practical AI: Build systems that interpret information, automate multi-step work, and recognize when a person needs to step in.

What we look for:

  • 2+ YOE

  • You’ve shipped and maintained production software that people depend on.

  • You can take an ambiguous business problem, ask good questions, and turn it into a focused solution.

  • You have strong backend and relational database fundamentals, and you’re comfortable building a polished frontend.

  • You think carefully about data correctness, failure handling, and how systems behave after deployment.

  • You have practical experience building with language models, including evaluating their output and handling mistakes.

  • You use AI development tools effectively and take responsibility for understanding, reviewing, and debugging the code you ship.

Source: Fernstone on Ashby · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Observed changes

  1. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  2. First observed on the employer's board
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-09-27
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: New York City

USD 120,000 – 180,000 · 1 YEAR · Salary

Method
Structured pay field published by the employer
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The employer's job board publishes this pay as a dedicated data field. We read the field directly; no interpretation was needed.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.