Ethos Employee Spotlight: Ankur Mishra

What has been your proudest professional moment this year?

I lead underwriting, data, and test engineering at Ethos. This year all three teams have either launched or made significant progress on fundamental capabilities that will set Ethos for the long term.

• Underwriting has stepped up our already advanced underwriting platform by adding new data sources and improved algorithms to provide families with a better match for their insurance needs.
• Data engineering has created a new data access layer that will provide internal and external users with a better model and significantly reduce the need for bespoke data pipelines. I am proud to see how much we accomplish with such lean teams.
• Test engineering. They adapted to challenges and pushed for better organizational processes while keeping a firm foot on the automation pedal. They are extending their wings to add sustenance engineering to their charter this year.

What is your greatest professional accomplishment?

Recently, building the underwriting engine at Ethos and helping unlock a more accurate, digital, and instant underwriting for our customers and partners.

In the early stage of my career, I was lucky to build proprietary Ethernet OAM (Operation, administration, and management protocols). This was way before the standards came out. I had a lot of fun building this cutting-edge technology.

When have you felt most fulfilled in your career?

I feel most fulfilled when I help a team member grow or help create a huge impact on the business. I felt really satisfied as a new manager when I promoted a team member for the first time and handed them significant ownership. I was proud to see them succeed in the new responsibility.

How have you shown leadership in your current role?

Right now, my role is to hire, develop and motivate leaders who are better than me.

What do you love most about Ethos?

People! When you are surrounded by people you genuinely like and trust and know that we are all working towards the same mission, it makes it easy to push and support each other. I think we are blessed to have such an amazing team!

What do you want others to know about Ethos?

We are a fun and ambitious team that’s gotten used to taking challenges head-on, solving them, constantly challenging the status quo, and improving things — our continuous desire to excel in creating a life insurance company like no other.

We want future Ethosaurs to participate in this ride and enjoy the step up that a company like Ethos offers.

What makes Ethos different from other companies you’ve worked for?

Team, team and team! 🙂

Who has been your greatest motivator/ mentor, and how have they impacted you professionally?

I have learned a lot from a lot of people. I have friends who don’t hesitate to give me the right feedback or advice. Vipul (Ethos, CTO) is definitely one of them. But at Ethos, I am blessed to have formed many more relationships with other leaders and my team. They have given me a lot of advice that has helped me stay focused on solving the right problems.

Most importantly, my wife, Divya has constantly supported some of my seemingly crazy professional decisions.

Ankur Mishra joined Ethos in March 2019 to lead Insurance Platform as Director of Software Engineering. When Ankur isn’t building and leading Platform Engineering teams, he enjoys spending time with family, reading and playing video games. Interested in joining Ankur’s team? Learn more about our career opportunities here