Staff Backend Engineer, Conversational AI

Trellis is a profitable, fast-growing Series A startup backed by General Catalyst, QED, NYCA, and Amex Ventures. We’re reimagining how people shop for home and auto insurance, using smart technology to make something historically painful feel refreshingly easy.

Every day, we help people save time, money, and unnecessary headaches. Behind the scenes, our fully remote team moves fast, owns their craft, and builds products that genuinely make life better.

Led by a three-time fintech founder with a proven track record of going big, we’re building something special, and we’re just getting started.

If you’re hungry to make an impact and love solving complex problems with a scrappy crew, you’ll love it here.

Position Overview

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Conversational AI team at Trellis, you’ll play a critical role in shaping the future of our AI-driven customer experiences. You’ll architect and build intelligent systems that power natural, engaging conversations between users and our platform. Working closely with cross-functional partners, you’ll transform high-level product initiatives into scalable, well-tested technical solutions.

You’ll lead the way on complex projects by defining scope, setting technical direction, and mentoring teammates along the way. You’ll guide the team through tough challenges, offer thoughtful code reviews, and contribute to a culture of continuous learning and collaboration. Whether you're onboarding new teammates or refining our LLM-driven infrastructure, you’ll be a key force behind our AI innovation.

You will report directly into John Hartley, Head of Conversational AI.

We believe in paying competitively for great work. As a remote team, we set our salaries at the 75th percentile of national market data in our industry. You can count on your pay being in line with (or above) the market. For this role, the base salary range is $220,000-$235,000. We review compensation twice a year to make sure we’re staying competitive and rewarding our team’s contributions.

Who You Are

• Meticulous: You pay attention to detail and take pride in what you deliver

• Articulate: You succinctly and effectively communicate verbal and written technical and non-technical ideas and topics

• Kind, not (just) nice: You provide tough feedback in a clear and concise manner that does not diminish or belittle the recipient

• Opinionated: You bring strong opinions to discussions but are willing to change your mind when presented with new or better information

• Product-minded: You focus on the “why” just as much as the “what” or “how”

• Collaborative: You work within your team and cross-functionally to build consensus and achieve results

• Autonomous: You are self-motivated, able to hold yourself accountable, and can generate high-value work with little direct supervision

What You’ll Do

• Own the ideation and execution of high-impact projects that directly influence the user experience and business outcomes

• Flesh out and evolve the Conversational AI Engineering roadmap alongside product and technical leadership

• Incept projects: identify opportunities, design solutions, and lead implementation

• Guide integration efforts with external agencies and insurance carriers

• Normalize, rank, and evaluate results using ML-based predictions to determine optimal user paths

• Work closely with our Data Science team to leverage MLMs in tools like DataRobot for retention forecasting and decision logic

• Ensure scalability and performance across the platform as we continue to grow

What You’ll Need

While you don’t need all of these to be successful in this role, we think you’ll be more successful the more you have

• 7+ years’ experience developing software in a production environment

• 4+ years’ experience in a senior engineer role

• Ability to lead projects from conception through execution

• Production experience with Node.js and Typescript

• Proven experience working in backend systems, designing RESTful APIs and codifying business logic on top of data stores

• Familiarity with GCP, Looker, BigQuery are a plus

• Exceptional ability to communicate clearly and concisely, particularly in Slack and technical documents

• Experience in product development where you were a key decision maker

• Cross-functional leadership and collaboration experience

Why Trellis? Because life’s too short for boring jobs.

We’re a team of builders, dreamers, and doers reshaping an industry that touches every household in America. At Trellis, you’ll have real ownership, meaningful impact, and the chance to grow alongside a company that’s scaling fast.

Here’s what makes Trellis an incredible place to build your career:

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✨ A flat, transparent culture where your voice actually matters

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🚀 Ground-floor opportunity with room to stretch and grow

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💰 Compensation at the 75th+ percentile

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🏡 100% remote... work from wherever you do your best thinking (In the US or Canada, that is)

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🎉 Quarterly team events that keep our fully remote culture connected and fun

And yes, the perks are pretty great too:

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🌴 Flexible vacation (seriously, we want you to take it)

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🩺 100% employer-paid health insurance for employees (65% for dependents)

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💻 Home office budget to set up your perfect workspace

• 🧘🏼‍♂️ Wellness events throughout the year, because we believe in investing in the full human, not just the employee

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💸 Automatic 401(k) contribution, FSAs, bonuses, and equity opportunities to invest in your future

• 🐣 Paid parental leave

👉 If you’re looking for a place where you can do the best work of your career, while building something that actually matters, we’d love to meet you.