Full-Time
Software Engineer
Ascend
51-200 employees
Automates agency billing, financing, payments
Compensation Overview
$160k - $200k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA
In Person
The role is on-site in San Francisco.
 Software Engineering (1) |
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- One to three years of relevant experience.
- Experience working at a growth-stage startup.
- Experience with relational databases.
- Experience building and scaling consumer products.
- A strong desire to learn new skills and solve business problems.
- Understand the platform, product, and customer workflows by collaborating with team members and engaging with customers.
- Get up to speed on prompt engineering, data extraction, testing, and monitoring practices.
- Contribute to user-facing projects.
- Partner with product managers and designers to solve customer challenges directly.
- Own prompt logic for a slice of the product, resolve data extraction issues, and partner with internal teams on testing and monitoring.
- Track extraction accuracy and investigate trends when things go wrong.
- Support new customer and organization onboarding through internal tooling improvements.
- Take ownership of end-to-end features that process insurance premiums.
- Build intuitive user interfaces to power financial operations.
- Maintain high product quality through proactive monitoring and continuous improvements.
- Collaborate with customers to translate their needs into scalable solutions for the insurance industry.
- Build reusable playbooks and prompt strategies that make future automation easier.
- Develop a point-of-sale system for insurance to enable seamless payments and improve conversion rates.
- Automate back-office tasks with artificial intelligence to reduce time and improve accuracy for accounting teams.
- Help shape technical architecture and processes as the platform scales.
- Mentor engineers through code reviews and technical guidance.
- Familiarity with or interest in learning Ruby on Rails and Next.js.
- Familiarity with building external application programming interfaces and integrations with platforms such as Salesforce.
- Experience building payment, checkout, or insurance products.
Ascend is a financial technology company that automates agency bill operations for insurance agencies. Its software combines billing, premium financing, and carrier payable workflows into one platform, helping agencies manage bills, finance premiums, and issue carrier payments more efficiently. Agencies interact with a user-friendly portal that clearly presents financing options, enabling faster policy binding and premium collection without back-and-forth paperwork. By automating these processes, Ascend aims to increase profitability and efficiency for agencies, and differentiate itself by offering a single integrated solution rather than multiple separate tools. The company’s stated goals are to improve EBITDA, reduce operating costs, and save agents time, enabling them to serve their clients better.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$285.5M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2021
Get referred to Ascend
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Ascend says 4,000 businesses use it, including half of top 50 brokers.
- Smart Inbox launched April 14, 2025, shrinking manual document entry and month-end close.
- Cash Application launched November 4, 2025, cutting unapplied cash and speeding SOX 404 reporting.
What critics are saying
- Regulators can block the Honor Capital merger, killing Ascend's financing moat in 2026.
- Insurance agencies switching AMS360 or Vertafore breaks Ascend's embedded workflow and revenue.
- Applied Systems, Vertafore, or carriers bundling automation compress margins and slow enterprise sales.
What makes Ascend unique
- Ascend unifies agency bill, payments, reconciliation, and premium financing for insurance workflows.
- March 3, 2026, CAA named Ascend its Accounting Automation Partner nationwide.
- May 14, 2026, the Honor Capital merger adds native premium financing nationwide.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
401(k) Company Match
401(k) Retirement Plan
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Phone/Internet Stipend
Parental Leave
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 1%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 0%Is your Agency Bill process ready for the busy season? By gabby nguyen posted 2 days ago. Summer offers something that's hard to come by in insurance: a chance to pause before the pace picks up again. It's the ideal time to evaluate the operational processes that will either support - or slow down - your team during renewal season. One of the biggest opportunities? Agency Bill. Many agencies have modernized their front office but still rely on manual invoicing, emailed premium finance agreements, multiple payment systems, and time-consuming receipt posting behind the scenes. Those inefficiencies often become most visible when volume increases. If your team is spending more time on billing than serving clients, it may be worth asking: Are account managers spending time chasing payments instead of working with customers? Are payment updates, premium finance agreements, and carrier payables spread across multiple systems? Is accounting still manually tracking payment status and posting receipts? Will your current process scale as your agency grows? Three Arbor Insurance, an AMS360 agency serving businesses across Alabama and Georgia, reached that point as production increased. Rather than hiring additional operations staff, the agency chose to modernize its financial workflows. As President David Foster explained, "I could solve the problem in one of two ways: either hire more operations-focused employees, increasing the costs to run the agency, or find a solution that helped me get more out of the team I had today." By integrating Ascend with AMS360, Three Arbor created a single workflow for invoicing, payments, financing, receipt tracking, and carrier payables. The result was a measurable improvement in efficiency: account managers were no longer spending an estimated 20% of their time chasing payments, negotiating premium finance agreements, and ensuring carrier payments went out on time. The agency also increased EBITDA by 4% through financial operations automation. These small operational improvements made today can have an outsized impact when business picks up. Exclusive for NetVU members: Schedule an Agency Bill Workflow Assessment with Ascend to benchmark your current process and identify opportunities to reduce manual work within your existing Vertafore environment. No commitment required - just practical recommendations tailored to your agency. 0 comments
Ascend and Honor Capital have agreed to merge, creating what they describe as the insurance industry's first fully vertically integrated financial operations platform. The combined entity will unify AI-powered accounting automation, invoicing, embedded payments and premium financing into a single solution for insurance businesses. Ascend's platform currently serves over 4,000 businesses, including more than half of the 50 largest US brokers. Honor Capital is the fourth-largest premium finance company in the United States, authorised to operate in all 50 states. Following the merger, Praveen Chekuri will serve as CEO alongside co-presidents Tony M. Perez and Andrew Wynn. Ascend co-founders Wynn and Chekuri established the company in 2021, whilst Perez has led Honor Capital for over a decade. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals.
Ascend named the Accounting Automation Partner for Combined Agents of America (CAA). Mar 03, 2026, 09:42 ET SAN FRANCISCO, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Ascend, the comprehensive financial operations automation platform for the insurance industry, today announced a strategic partnership with Combined Agents of America (CAA), one of the nation's largest privately held insurance aggregator groups. This partnership designates Ascend as the Accounting Automation Partner for CAA's nationwide network of independent agencies. The collaboration is designed to modernize back-office operations for CAA member agencies, replacing fragmented manual workflows with end-to-end automation for both agency and direct bill processes. Eliminating the Back-Office Bottleneck As independent agencies scale, accounting workflows - traditionally manual and error-prone - often become a primary bottleneck. Ascend's platform removes these hurdles by automating the most time-consuming aspects of the insurance lifecycle: * Commission Reconciliations: Eliminating hours spent processing and matching policy commissions. * Billing & Payments: Streamlining premium collection for a seamless client experience. * Carrier Payables: Accelerating commissions and increasing speed-to-bind. "Our mission at CAA has always been to empower our members with the best-in-class tools they need to thrive," said A.J Lovitt, CEO of Combined Agents of America. "Ascend's innovative approach to automation allows our agencies to pivot from administrative tasks to high-value client service and strategic growth." Driving the Future of Accounting Operations This partnership arrives as the insurance industry increasingly prioritizes digital transformation and the integration of AI-driven financial tools. "CAA represents a leader for independent agency networks," said Amelia Lee, Head of Partnerships at Ascend. "We are thrilled to be their exclusive accounting automation partner and help provide solutions that support the growth ambitions of CAA's member agencies." About Ascend Ascend is the comprehensive accounting automation platform for the insurance industry, providing technology that automates payments, collections, payables, and reconciliation for agencies, intermediaries and carriers. To learn more about how Ascend can transform your business, please visit www.useascend.com. About Combined Agents of America (CAA) Founded in 1997, Combined Agents of America, LLC is a leading insurance network of independent insurance agencies. Committed to the evolution of the independent agency system, CAA provides its members with the leverage, resources, and scale of a national organization while maintaining local agency independence. Media Contact: Mike Nguyen SOURCE Ascend
Ascend launches Cash Application tool to address unapplied cash balances. New solution automates reconciliation to improve financial accuracy and compliance for insurance brokers. (Image source: Ascend Cash Application page.) Ascend (San Francisco) has launched Cash Application, a new component of its accounting automation platform designed to help insurance brokers reduce unapplied cash balances and maintain compliance with financial reporting standards. The solution automates accounts receivable reconciliation, enabling brokers to accelerate revenue recognition and streamline month-end processes. Cash Application tracks and categorizes client invoices, carrier commission statements, and return premiums, reducing reliance on manual workflows that often delay reconciliation and obscure financial performance. "A Top 20 broker facing compliance challenges with their unapplied cash balances partnered with Ascend to implement Cash Application," comments Andrew Wynn, Co-CEO, Ascend. "Since adopting the solution, they've cut their monthly balance of unapplied cash by more than half, and what previously took more than eight days to reconcile now takes just three." * Categorize all bank deposits in real time and assign them to the correct line items in agency management systems (AMS). * Automatically match and apply cash to statements and invoices by fetching relevant financial documents. * Improve revenue recognition and cash flow by reducing unapplied cash. * Support SOX 404 compliance through clear, audit-ready reporting. Cash Application joins Ascend's portfolio of financial automation tools, including its Direct Bill Reconciliation solution, and reflects the company's focus on increasing operational efficiency for brokers. "Our goal has always been to make financial operations as effortless and transparent as possible," adds Wynn. "With Cash Application, we're giving agencies the financial control and flexibility they've been missing."
Smart Inbox automates processing of documents for both agency bill and direct bill workflowsSAN FRANCISCO, April 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend, the leading financial operations automation platform for the insurance industry, today announced the launch of Smart Inbox, an AI-powered email inbox that automatically reads, categorizes, and processes the full range of financial and policy documents insurance agencies encounter on a daily basis. Built for account managers handling invoicing or finance teams reconciling payables and commissions, Smart Inbox reduces clerical errors as well as time spent on processing documents and manually entering data.Key Features and Benefits:AscendCentralized Accounting and Billing Inbox: Agencies can forward any billing or accounting document—binders, quotes, invoices, or statements—into a single inbox. Smart Inbox serves as a unified hub for document intake across departments.Agencies can forward any billing or accounting document—binders, quotes, invoices, or statements—into a single inbox. Smart Inbox serves as a unified hub for document intake across departments. Faster Invoicing Workflows: Smart Inbox automatically extracts the necessary billing information from binders or quotes to create client invoices—reducing manual errors and allowing account managers to spend less time on invoice creation.Smart Inbox automatically extracts the necessary billing information from binders or quotes to create client invoices—reducing manual errors and allowing account managers to spend less time on invoice creation. Automated Direct Bill Commission Reconciliation: Smart Inbox analyzes commission statements, attributes them to the correct carrier, and automatically reconciles them with expected commissions in agency management systems—significantly increasing the accuracy and speed of month-end close."Smart Inbox has been extremely beneficial for my team to reduce manual data entry and clerical errors, by allowing us to use AI to make it even easier to process and invoice our clients," said Wade Millward, CEO of Rikor Insurance Consultancy.Smart Inbox is the latest addition to Ascend's suite of AI-powered automation tools—including AI-Invoicing and Direct Bill Automation