Independent insurance broker serving mid-market and enterprise clients across property, casualty, and benefits
Cottingham & Butler is a 1,300+ person insurance broker operating with a Microsoft + AWS + SQL stack, heavily tilted toward analytics (Power BI, Tableau, Redshift, Synapse, Fabric) rather than software product development. The 51 open sales roles against only 5 engineering positions signals a traditional advisory-and-service model, not a tech platform play. Active hiring in healthcare and support departments, combined with projects around health coaching, benefits packages, and risk management, reflects their focus on employee benefits as a growth vector alongside property & casualty placement.
Cottingham & Butler is the third-largest privately held independent insurance broker in the U.S., headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa, and founded in 1887. The company serves mid-market and enterprise clients across property & casualty insurance, employee benefits, and specialized verticals including manufacturing, construction, agribusiness, and transportation. With over 1,300 employees across the United States, the organization operates as a traditional advisory broker — licensing, placing, and managing insurance policies and benefits programs — rather than as a software vendor. Recent project activity shows investment in health coaching platforms, benefits administration, and risk assessment processes, indicating expansion into managed health and wellness services.
Core platforms are Microsoft Office, Excel, SQL (PostgreSQL, SQL Server), and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure). Analytics layers include Power BI, Tableau, Redshift, and Azure Synapse. Backend uses Python, JavaScript, C#, Go, and infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM Templates).
Active projects include health coaching and condition management programs, employee benefits package design, risk management assessments, M&A due diligence support, and strategic planning for mid-year client reviews.
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