Senior Product Engineer - API

About Kota

Kota is making insurance and retirement benefits as accessible as modern software. We do this across two products: Kota Platform, the first fully integrated benefits platform, and Kota Embed, our embedded insurance and retirement product for platforms.
Today we power benefits for tens of thousands of employees at companies including Carwow, Tines, Zoe and Remote. Founded in 2022, we've raised more than €20M from investors including EQT Ventures, Eurazeo, Northzone and Frontline, along with founders and executives from Workday, Remote, Personio and OpenAI.

The role and team

We're looking for a Senior Product Engineer to join the API team within Kota Embed. The team owns the APIs, SDKs and documentation that let HR, payroll and EOR platforms offer insurance and retirement benefits to their own customers. For us the API is the product, not the plumbing behind it.
Every platform integrates differently, every market has its own providers and rules, and developers need all of it to just work. You'll start with the developer's journey and the employers and employees they serve, then work back to the right technical solution.
This is a full stack role. Most of your time will likely be on the backend, but you'll work wherever the problem sits, including frontend when a feature needs it. We don't hire for a particular language or framework. We care far more about how you think than what you've used before.
It's an autonomous role. You'll be trusted to make product calls, not just technical ones, and we want you adding to the roadmap rather than picking up tickets.

What you'll do

• Design and build the APIs, SDKs and documentation that platforms use to embed Kota benefits, and make them easier to integrate, understand and use

• Get close to the problem before the code: find where developers and customers get stuck and turn that into clear product decisions

• Join client calls when it helps you understand a problem or explain a solution

• Own your work end to end, from scoping with the team through architecture and delivery to what happens after launch, including customer issues

• Work across the stack wherever the problem needs you, rather than stopping at the edge of one codebase

• Push back when a request doesn't match your understanding of the problem, and bring your own ideas to the roadmap

• Use AI throughout how you work: planning, building, reviewing and shipping. We expect this, not just tolerate it

• Keep what you own reliable, secure and observable, and contribute to code reviews and technical planning

• Help shape how the team works as it grows

What we're looking for

• 6+ years building production software, with examples of products you've owned and improved, not just delivered

• Product judgement. You can explain the user problem, the choices you made and what changed for customers

• Full stack experience. You're comfortable going deep on the backend and can work in the frontend when the product needs it

• A track record of taking a loose brief to production, and of pushing back when something was the wrong thing to build

• Experience building dependable APIs or integrations with third-party systems. Fintech, payroll, pensions or benefits experience is a plus

• AI-native ways of working. You use AI for planning, setup and review, not just autocomplete, and you're critical about what it produces

• A clear communicator who can explain a decision to an engineer and to a customer, and knows which version each one needs

• Care for reliability, security and compliance, because people rely on what we build for important benefits

• Comfortable with pace, ambiguity and ownership in a fast-growing startup

• Ability to work to GMT hours with a 08:00 - 10:00 start

You don't need experience in any particular language or framework. Good engineers here ship to production in their first week, and the real learning curve is the product, not the stack.

Why join us

• An interesting problem. Multi-provider, multi-market benefits, delivered through one API to platforms whose customers employ people across many countries

• Agency. We hire people and trust them. You'll own meaningful parts of the product end to end

• Customer proximity. You'll hear directly from the people using what you build and see the impact

• Impact from day one. We're a small, focused team. What you build ships fast and matters

• AI-first. We invest heavily in AI tooling and we're not precious about token spend. If it helps you build better or faster, use it

• High standards, low bureaucracy. We care about clean design and thoughtful engineering, without the process that slows it down

Our hiring process

1. Recruiter chat (30 mins): cover the basics and make sure we're aligned

2. Introductory call (30 to 60 mins): meet one or two of our product engineers to talk through your work, how you think about product and how you use AI

3. Technical interview (90 mins): a collaborative pair programming session with two of our engineers. You'll build something small against a real API, using AI tools the way you would day to day. We're looking at how you think and the product decisions you make, not speed

4. Call with founders (30 mins): we'll share our vision and hear your thoughts

5. Final response: we'll follow up promptly with next steps

Kota benefits

• Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing startup

• Health insurance via Kota

• Workplace pension with matched contributions (depending on location)

• Group life assurance via Kota

• WFH stipend to support your home office setup

• Generous paid time off. Work hard and take the time you need

• Access to office space in Dublin or a co-working space wherever you're based

• Remote-first with some fixed hours for team alignment

• Annual company-wide offsite

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status.