Principal Sales Engineer (New York)
$165k - $190k USD
About Kalepa:
Commercial insurance is a trillion-dollar industry still run out of Microsoft Outlook.
Kalepa is changing that.
Kalepa is an AI Underwriting Platform built to deliver Professional-Grade AI in production - helping the world's most important insurers centralize and prioritize submission data, surface critical risk insights, and make faster, more confident decisions. Customers see meaningful improvements to both speed and portfolio quality as soon as they implement Kalepa - so much so that clients call it “truly an underwriter’s dream.”
Kalepa is backed by leading investors such as IA Ventures and Inspired Capital, and our team brings experience from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Mastercard, and Uber.
Our Values (This is important):
Many organizations have a dusty list of corporate values that no one ever follows. Kalepa is not one of those companies. Our values are designed to unlock the potential of our employees.
Success at Kalepa is bred from five core principles:
- Hustle and Determination - We hire people who take full ownership of their craft and relentlessly pursue excellence with speed and determination. We choose the hard problems and do not give up. This is the foundation of how we work and how we win.
- Deliver Customer Impact - We're obsessed with customer impact. Every feature, every line of code, every decision is measured against one question: does this help insurers make better decisions? If it doesn't drive speed, accuracy, or profitability for our customers, we don't build it.
- Meritocracy - We're building something exceptional, and that requires exceptional people and ideas. We have a high bar but we reward excellence with rapid growth. If you're the best at what you do, you'll thrive here.
- Transparency - We value honest, transparent communication over politics. We challenge ideas, not people. We say what needs to be said, even when it's hard. This is how we solve problems fast and find the truth.
- Experiment Relentlessly - Many of the problems we face have never been solved before. We tackle them by testing quickly, measuring rigorously, and iterating until we find the path forward. Speed of learning is our advantage.
In addition to our NY office, we have remote employees speaking 10+ languages across the globe. But we invest in bringing our people together both for regional meetups and global offsites (2021 - Playa Del Carmen | 2022 - Rome | 2023 - Buenos Aires | 2024 - Lisbon | 2025 - Cartagena).
Kalepa’s culture isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But for the people who are a fit, they can’t imagine working elsewhere.
About the role:
Base Salary: $165k - $190k
OTE: $236k - $271k
Location: New York City
Kalepa is looking for an exceptional Sales engineer with 7+ years of enterprise sales engineer experience to help accelerate Kalepa’s commercial efforts with leading insurers. You will serve as a critical technical and consultative resource throughout the sales process, working with prospective clients to show how Kalepa’s software can elevate their underwriting process and drive measurable value for the insurer.
You will partner directly with Account Executives, and be a close collaborator with Kalepa’s Product, Engineering, and Client Success teams to help bring the software to life and successfully bring new clients into the fold.
This is a unique opportunity for someone with fantastic interpersonal commercial skills, a strong technical acumen, and ability to translate the language of complex processes into comprehensible solutions. You will report to Kalepa’s Director of Sales Engineering and maintain principal responsibility for the SE efforts on your assigned accounts.
What You’ll Do:
- Act as a trusted advisor during the sales cycle, guiding prospective clients through the technical and business evaluation of Kalepa’ platform
- Support and coordinate responses to RFPs, RFIs, and due diligence questionnaires
- Design and lead tailored demos and workshops, to bring the software to life in an insurer-specific context
- Travel up to 15% of the time to lead in-person sales workshops, going deep on the product, speaking to the prospect’s use case, and mapping out what a successful deployment would look like
- Scope engagements, draft Statements of Work (SOW), and set delivery timelines in collaboration with cross-functional teams
- Facilitate seamless transitions to Kalepa’s Client Success team
- Collaborate on foundational sales engineering processes, playbooks, and collateral that will support future growth in the region
- Help Kalepa win deal after deal
About You:
- 7+ years of experience in financial services or financial technology, ideally with exposure to insurance, wealth management, investment platforms, or SaaS deployments. Candidates who also have experience with complex SaaS solutions that can articulate and demonstrate value over features.
- Prior experience in roles such as solutions engineering, sales engineering, client onboarding, pre-sales, product management, or technical consulting
- You love to hustle: finding ways to get things done, destroying obstacles, and never taking no for an answer.
- You are passionate, deeply motivated, and have a strong will to win. You are excited about bringing a world-class solution to clients and to helping them win in-market.
- Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence and educate stakeholders across varying levels of technical understanding
- AI-forward thinker, with a deep interest in artificial intelligence and constant emphasis on leveraging new capabilities to improve and streamline your work
Ideal Candidate will have:
- Experience in technology for regulated industries like insurance or financial services
- Strong technical foundation with the ability to discuss architecture, APIs, and integration patterns fluently
- Fluent in SQL, Excel wizardry, or Python scripting. Prompt engineering experience is a plus
- Understanding of AI, ML, and automation concepts (we can teach this!)
- A deep love for tech, data, and using both to drive better outcomes
- You have an experience at a growth-stage startup helping to scale the company during hypergrowth
What you’ll get
- Competitive salary (based on experience level).
- Significant equity options package.
- 401(k) plan with employer match (regardless of employee contribution)
- Excellent benefits: 100% covered medical, 100% covered vision and dental for individuals and families, and others
- Work with an ambitious, smart, global, and fun team to transform a $1T global industry.
- 20 days of PTO a year
- Global team offsites (2021 - Playa del Carmen, 2022 - Rome, 2023 - Buenos Aires, 2024 - Lisbon, 2025 - Cartagena)
- Healthy living/gym stipend. Mobile phone bill stipend.
- Continuing education credits.
*The salary range listed is an estimate and will vary based on a variety of factors. Final compensation will be determined during the offer stage based on relevant experience, performance during the interview process, and geographic location, and may therefore differ from the posted range.