The RoleWe are hiring a Software Engineer focused on Applied AI to build intelligent systems that directly power our underwriting and pricing engine. This role sits at the intersection of product engineering, AI infrastructure, and real-world insurance workflows.You will design and ship production AI systems that meaningfully improve how we evaluate risk, price policies, and operate our business.What You'll DoPartner with product, engineering, underwriting, and data teams to identify high-leverage AI opportunitiesDesign, build, and deploy LLM-powered features across underwriting, pricing, and internal toolingDevelop AI agents and retrieval-augmented systems that extract structured insights from unstructured insurance dataBuild production-grade AI infrastructure for model serving, inference, evaluation, and monitoringCreate internal AI tools that enable underwriters and operators to move faster with higher quality decisionsEstablish best practices for prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and model reliabilityOwn AI features end-to-end from ideation to productionWhat We're Looking ForStrong backend engineering experience building scalable APIs and distributed systemsHands-on experience shipping AI-powered products into productionFamiliarity with LLMs, RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector databasesExperience integrating AI systems into user-facing or workflow-driven applicationsComfort with cloud infrastructure and deploying AI workloads at scaleA product mindset and the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into concrete AI systemsYou have at least 5+ years of working experience (preferably as a full-stack engineer) with a track record of delivering high-impact productsBonus PointsExperience building AI agents or multi-step reasoning systemsBackground in applied machine learning beyond generative AIExperience with pricing systems, financial infrastructure, or risk modelingInterest in transforming legacy industries with modern AI systemsWhy This Role MattersInsurance is one of the largest industries in the world, yet much of underwriting and pricing remains manual and fragmented. At Shepherd, AI is not a side project – it is core to how we build durable competitive advantage.You will help define how applied AI transforms risk evaluation in high-hazard industries and shape the future of AI-native insurance infrastructure.Our Tech StackFrontendReact & Next.jsTypescriptGraphQL w/ ApolloBackendNode.jsPostgres & RedisTypescriptGraphQL APIsBenefitsPremium Healthcare 100% contribution to top-tier health, dental, and visionFertility benefits and family building supportUnlimited PTO Flexibility to take the time off, recharge, and performDaily lunches, dinners, and snacks We work together, and enjoy meals together tooSF, NYC, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago and LA OfficesProfessional Development Access to premium coaching, including leadership developmentCompetitive 401(k) PlanDog-friendly office Plenty of dogs to play with and make friends with in the SF office