Full-Time
Staff Backend Engineer
Core AI
Posted on 6/22/2025
Anzen
11-50 employees
AI-powered insurance placement and analysis
Compensation Overview
$200k - $230k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA
Remote
Remote work allowed; align with Pacific Time; SF HQ reference.
 Software Engineering (1) |
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- 8+ years building data-intensive or machine-learning-driven backend systems
- Production mindset: you’ve shipped business critical models with measurable business impact (latency, cost, ROI).
- Broad machine-learning toolbox, from classic machine learning (especially natural language processing) to generative AI
- Strong backend fundamentals: distributed systems, streaming data pipelines
- Fluency in Python and/or TypeScript in a production environment.
- Startup DNA: thrive in ambiguity, bias to action.
- Partner with Design & Product to translate fuzzy broker pain points into concrete, AI capabilities that perform equally or better than human experts.
- Own the full machine-learning lifecycle from framing business problems into research problems, evaluating results and rolling them out with the appropriate infrastructure.
- Architect production-grade systems that marry real-time inference with human-in-the-loop review and comply with strict privacy and audit requirements.
- Elevate engineering quality, driving technical roadmaps and championing best practices
- Mentor our Engineering team and help define Engineering culture at Anzen.
Anzen is a wholesale brokerage that connects 5,000+ retail insurance agents with specialty insurance products through an AI-powered platform. Anzen Pro is an end-to-end workspace that converts unstructured submissions into structured data, routes risks to suitable markets, and provides fast quote comparisons while integrating with agents’ email and management tools. Its Anzen Specialty Marketplace covers D&O, Cyber Risk, Tech E&O, and Professional Liability, and MgmtOps automates compliance by linking HR and payroll data to surface risks. By using AI to automate manual workflows in the insurance placement process, Anzen reduces agent overhead and speeds up placement, with the goal of modernizing the insurance experience for agents and policyholders.
Company Size
11-50
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$31.8M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2020
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- $26M funding from Madrona and Andreessen Horowitz fuels AI expansions.
- Serves 5,000 agents processing thousands of submissions monthly.
- Reduces agent overhead by 30% and time by 50%.
What critics are saying
- Brokerage shutdown cuts staff, eroding trust from 5,000 agents.
- $10M cash runway ends mid-2026 without revenue pivot.
- Madrona withholds bridge funding after Series A execution failure.
What makes Anzen unique
- Anzen Pro converts unstructured submissions into structured data for rapid quoting.
- AI analyzes policy clauses, endorsements, and exclusions with precision.
- MgmtOps automates compliance via HR and payroll system integrations.
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Benefits
Remote Work Options
Professional Development Budget
Company Equity
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 21%1 year growth
↑ 21%2 year growth
↑ 21%Wholesale insurtech platform Anzen is shutting down its brokerage operations immediately and cutting most of its workforce, just months after securing $16 million in Series A funding. The announcement was communicated to retail brokers and clients, marking a rapid strategic shift for the company. The closure highlights challenges insurtech startups face in balancing rapid growth with sustainable operations. Anzen has not detailed reasons behind the decision, though post-funding business model re-evaluations are common in the sector. The move primarily affects retail brokers and clients using Anzen's brokerage services, as well as employees being let go. Industry observers will monitor how the company plans to stabilise or reinvent itself in the dynamic insurtech market.
Anzen in California raises $16M to scale AI platform for insurance distribution. San Francisco, California-based Anzen announced a $16 million Series A funding round led by Madrona, with participation from Sandbox Industries, SNR, Andreessen Horowitz and other investors. The round brings Anzen's total reported capital raised to $26 million. With this funding, Anzen says it will expand its Artificial intelligence-powered workflows, strengthen its carrier and AMS integration ecosystem and grow its team. Anzen was founded in 2021, and it reports more than 5,000 retail agents nationwide and processing thousands of submissions each month across specialty, excess, and property/casualty lines.
Anzen, an AI-powered platform for commercial insurance distribution, raised a $16 million Series A led by Madrona, with participation from Sandbox Industries, SNR, and Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to $26 million. The funds will expand Anzen's AI workflows, carrier integrations, and team. Anzen aims to handle 80% of commercial insurance workflows by mid-2026, enhancing efficiency and reducing overhead for agents.
Anzen raises $16 million Series A to scale AI platform for insurance distribution. Anzen, the AI-powered platform redefining how commercial insurance is distributed, today announced a $16 million Series A led by Madrona, with participation from Sandbox Industries, SNR, Andreessen Horowitz, and other leading investors. The round brings Anzen's total capital raised to $26 million. Since its founding in 2021, Anzen has grown rapidly to millions in ARR, serving more than 5,000 retail agents nationwide and processing thousands of submissions each month across Specialty, Excess, and P&C lines. The company has already quoted hundreds of millions in premium, positioning it as the first truly AI-native distribution platform built to handle accounts of any size. With this funding, Anzen will expand its AI-powered workflows, strengthen its carrier and AMS integration ecosystem, and grow its team to support the rapidly expanding base of agents using the platform. Commercial insurance still runs on PDFs, email threads, and hours of manual data entry - a trillion-dollar industry constrained by analog bottlenecks. "We're solving the structural inefficiency at the core of commercial insurance distribution," said Max Bruner, Anzen's Founder & CEO. "This funding accelerates our mission to give every independent agent the technology and market access they need to work every deal, regardless of size or complexity. "For years, we've been building and using these workflows ourselves as practicing wholesale brokers. We didn't just theorize what the industry needs - we lived the pain and solved it in detail and at scale. Now agencies are flooding in because we've built what others couldn't: a complete AI workspace that actually works for insurance distribution." Independent agencies - long underserved and disconnected - are turning to Anzen to modernize how they access commercial markets. At the core of Anzen's platform is Anzen AI, proprietary technology powering Anzen Pro, the company's end-to-end AI workspace. While dozens of new AI startups are entering insurance, Anzen is already operating at scale - building, deploying, and continuously refining AI-powered workflows that brokers use every day. These mature automations have been stress-tested and relied on by thousands of insurance agents in real-world distribution. Unlike generic automation or surface-level integrations, Anzen AI is trained specifically on Specialty, Excess, and P&C-line workflows where traditional systems fail. It transforms unstructured submissions into structured data, intelligently routes risks to the right markets, and compares quotes in seconds - all while integrating seamlessly with agents' existing email workflows and agency management systems (AMS). On the market-access side, Anzen orchestrates both direct carrier placements and wholesale distribution through a combination of email-based workflows and API connections, giving agents comprehensive coverage across all distribution channels. These capabilities reduce agency overhead by over 30 percent and save the average agent 50 percent of their time, freeing producers to focus on clients and growth rather than manual processing. Backed by a national team of wholesale brokers with decades of experience, Anzen has also connected hundreds of underwriters and markets into its quoting network - market access achievable only through active deal flow and deep industry relationships. The result is institutional-grade execution that scales from solo producers to national agencies. The Series A will accelerate Anzen's product roadmap, including deeper carrier integrations, new support for commercial property and auto, and the public launch of Anzen Pro - a unified workspace where agencies can submit, quote, bind, renew, and manage their entire book. By mid-2026, Anzen aims for Anzen Pro to handle 80 percent of all commercial insurance workflows within a single system - eliminating the fragmentation and point solutions that have long slowed the industry. The company also plans to expand strategic partnerships across the AI and data ecosystem - embedding risk intelligence, external data enrichments, satellite imagery, claims data, and third-party models to further extend its technology leadership. "Commercial insurance distribution has been stuck in the analog era for far too long," said Chris Picardo, Partner at Madrona. "Anzen is attacking the hardest part of the problem - Specialty, E&S, and Casualty lines where everything is done over email and siloed databases. By combining wholesale expertise with vertical AI, they've built a platform that transforms the back office and outcomes delivered by independent agents and the largest brokerages."
Anzen raises £1.1M to deliver scalable, low-carbon heating for underserved homes.