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SONE hiring "bigtime" near Boston for insurance product.
April 20 -- a suburban Boston newspaper has a half-page bold ad in the classifieds headed:
"Internet Insurance
HIRING BIGTIME@
www.s1.com
in Littleton, MA"
It lists 11 categories of worker sought, from "Senior Software Engineer" through "Web Interface Architect" and "Business Analyst - Homeowner Insurance" and "Business Analyst - Auto Insurance"
It says "We're S1 Corp. We created the software for the world's first Internet bank. Now is your chance to get in on the ground floor and develop the next generation, Internet-based insurance product for leading, national insurance carriers."
Gary Crafts, the e-insurance analyst formerly with E-Offering and now with Deutsche Bank, pointed to State Farm's online insurance technology developed by S1 as one of the reasons why State Farm pulled out of InsWeb (INSW) a few weeks ago. Their withdrawal from InsWeb suggests to me that the S1 system is ready. Maybe one of you have better info about the status of State Farm's system built by S1.
A very similar ad ran in the Boston Globe last year about this time, when S1 began work on the State Farm project, for jobs in Boston. I've not seen such ads for a while, and the link on S1's web site to a listing of jobs available in Boston area disappeared sometime last year.
Littleton is about 25 miles northwest of Boston center, just off I-495, the outer ring-road. The Littleton, MA category on S1's site at s1.com presently lists ten job categories, including Senior Software Engineers for "VINS Auto" and for "VINS Homeowners" which describe that job in part as:
"Unique opportunity to lead the software architecture effort to develop the next generation, Internet-based insurance product. Responsible for defining the architecture of the Consumer Insurance Product, which includes online rate quotes, claims and policy view change for the auto, property and casualty lines. Qualified applicant must have minimum five years of systems architecture experience and proven understanding of OO design methodologies. Primary responsibilities include the analysis and design of insurance components, ability to serve as an authority on object-oriented practices and techniques, and the development of common insurance business objects and services for application team use."
The use of the plural "insurance carriers" in the ad above suggests to me that this hiring is for a project different from the web-insurance development work for State Farm that S1 has been doing for about a year (and which may now be substantially complete). If my memory is correct, some of the posters here on Silicon Investor reported that they had heard that the State Farm system was either not suitable or not available for license to other insurance companies.
What's the word on the street? Is this new hiring push for the Littleton, MA operation for a project commissioned by a particular insurance company or insurance agency client, or is S1 now using the expertise it gained from working for State Farm to build its own online insurance system for general license to any insurance company, bank or broker ready to pay the license fee?
Doug (no present position in S1) |
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