Forward Deployed Operations

FORWARD DEPLOYED OPERATIONS

Harper is an AI-native commercial insurance company in San Francisco. We're not bolting AI onto insurance — we're rebuilding the entire business as software, on a simple bet: turning expert human judgment into compute is one of the largest transitions left to make, and a trillion-dollar industry still run 90% by hand is the place to prove it. We've grown ~100x in the last year and we move at that speed — on-site, in person, long days, very high standards. Almost no one joins Harper for insurance; they join to build the company that replaces how it works.

THE ROLE

A trillion-dollar industry runs on knowledge nobody wrote down — what the data means, what the operation actually needs, what users are motivated by, and where the leverage hides. This role synthesizes those disconnected streams into one thing: a clear read on the most important problem to solve next. Then you build the thing that solves it.

You'll embed with the operators who run Harper — sales, service, underwriting, carrier relations — learn the operation end-to-end, find the 20% of friction causing 80% of the drag, and ship the thing that removes it. One day you're chasing a stalled quote with an underwriter. The next you're shipping the automation that makes sure no quote stalls again. The day after, you're on a customer call, feeding what you heard into a product spec. You run the operation and you improve the operation — both, always. It takes a curious, analytical mind, sharp product intuition, and genuine empathy for the people doing the work.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Find the leverage. Sit with operators, watch the work, and surface the automations nobody built because nobody knew they were possible yet.

- Run the operation. Underwriter follow-ups, carrier communications, customer calls, keeping deals moving through the pipeline. You're in the work, not above it.

- Build fast. AI agents, internal tools, workflow automations — prototype in days, ship ...