Senior Software Engineer

Job description

**About Avante** Ask any employee to explain their benefits, and you'll likely get a confused shrug. Ask any HR leader if their benefits investment is working, and you'll get an honest "I don't know." For employees, benefits are confusing and overwhelming. For HR and finance leaders, benefits are the second-largest expense, but they lack the visibility to know what's working and what's wasted. At Avante, we're changing that. We're an AI-native benefits intelligence platform built to turn benefits complexity into clarity. For employees, our agent Carly provides personalized, always-on benefits guidance. For benefits leaders, our agent Ava monitors their entire program, surfaces what needs attention, and delivers strategic intelligence on costs, utilization, and outcomes in seconds. Together, these agents create a closed-loop system where employee engagement data informs benefits strategy, and smarter strategy improves the employee experience. We're based in Seattle and work 4 days a week in the office (one day remote). We're growing fast, serving enterprise customers like Samsung, Zscaler, and News Corp. ### The Role We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives in a hands-on role. You’ll be writing a lot of production code across our TypeScript-based stack while also contributing through thoughtful design, code reviews, and mentoring. This is not an ivory tower role - we need someone who enjoys solving problems at the keyboard, shipping features, and making pragmatic technical decisions. You’ll bring the judgment and maturity to guide others, but you’ll do so while actively building alongside them. ### What You'll Do - Write high-quality, production-ready code across the stack. - Design and build scalable services, APIs, and user-facing features within our TypeScript monorepo - Integrate with external systems such as HRIS and ticketing platforms - Model data, design schemas, and optimize queries to keep our systems fast and reliable - Build for production with a focus on observability, monitoring, and testability from day one - Participate in design discussions, code reviews, and technical decision-making - Mentor teammates by sharing context, giving feedback, and helping them grow their craft - Collaborate closely with product, design, and engineering peers to deliver solutions that drive real business value ### What We're Looking For - Deep expertise in the backend engineering, with solid working knowledge of the other side - Proven track record of delivering complex features end-to-end in production systems - Deep experience with TypeScript or other modern application development languages such as Java, C#, or Python. - Familiarity with system architecture, API design, and scalable engineering patterns - Proficiency with databases (schema design, query optimization, performance tuning) - Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, prioritize well, and balance speed with maintainability - Strong communication skills and empathy for both teammates and end users - Interest in leveraging AI to enhance user experiences, and openness to using AI tools to boost your own productivity ### Our Company Values Our four values aren't aspirational. They translate into concrete operating tenets that shape how we make decisions every day. - **Beat Yesterday.** We re-evaluate our own toolkit every quarter, because the workflows that made you effective three months ago may already be outdated. We act on 70% of the information rather than waiting for certainty. We timebox, execute, and iterate, getting work in front of real people quickly instead of polishing in isolation. And we own our output regardless of how we produced it. AI can get you 80% of the way there. Everything that goes out with your name on it is your responsibility to review, refine, and stand behind. - **Embrace Type 2 Fun.** We take on hard problems and find meaning in the work, even when it's uncomfortable. We assume good intent and follow up directly rather than venting in side channels. We celebrate wins loudly and specifically, naming the actual behavior so the whole team learns what great looks like. We are on by default, because we owe it to each other and to our customers to be available beyond what a regular corporate job would demand. And we do unscalable things today that build scalable advantages tomorrow. Every white-glove dinner, every hand-built territory map, every late-night booth setup earns us the right to scale later. - **Stay Hungry, Stay Curious.** We expect everyone to be the expert on AI in their function before anyone asks them to be. The landscape changes weekly. When you learn something, teach it. Learn enough about adjacent functions to ask good questions, including what your AEs are saying on calls, how brokers actually make money, and why a benefits committee pushes back on a deal. Ask the question you think is too basic, because in complex domains like benefits, the cost of a wrong assumption can be a lost account. And remember: curiosity without urgency is a hobby. Learning has to translate into action on a timeline that matches the opportunity. - **Act Like an Owner.** We say the uncomfortable thing early, raising missed commitments or quality gaps directly with the person within 48 hours. We surface problems when they're small, not the week they become a crisis. Customer-facing work gets priority, always. And we close the loop every time, because over-communication is a feature at our stage, not a bug.