{"id":24644,"url":"https://alion.io/job/shepherd-software-engineer-applied-ai","title":"Software Engineer, Applied AI","company":{"id":6727,"name":"Shepherd","domain":"shepherdinsurance.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/shepherd","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":61,"open_postings":20,"ghost_share":0.65,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-09-30T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":170000,"max":225000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":225000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":true},{"name":"GraphQL","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Next.js","optional":true},{"name":"Node JS","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true},{"name":"Redis","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-02-24T10:17:23Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-02-24","last_verified_at":"2026-10-01T02:43:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":218,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":217},"description":"What We Do\nYesterday's insurance wasn't built for today's risk. We see it in the data and we feel it in the field. Emerging technology can reinvent how risk is priced and managed, faster and smarter, anchored in proven expertise. First-movers will define the next era of commercial risk management, and Shepherd is building it.\nShepherd is a technology-driven Managing General Underwriter (MGU) transforming commercial Property & Casualty insurance for high-hazard industries. Our mission is to make risk frictionless for the builders and operators shaping the physical world, protecting progress from concept through construction and into decades of operation.\nWe're building the fastest, smartest commercial risk platform, where underwriting expertise, data, and automation work together to deliver:\nFaster decisions\n\nSmarter, more accurate pricing\n\nBetter risk outcomes\n\nWith Shepherd, safety, speed, and quality no longer trade off against one another. They compound. We're not just modernizing insurance products. We're building the risk infrastructure for the next generation of financial services, where technology, underwriting, and partnerships operate in harmony to support the world's most important industries and the progress they make possible.\nOur Investors\nIn March 2026, Shepherd raised a $42M Series B - bringing total funding to over $60M - led by Intact Private Capital, the investment arm of one of the largest insurers in the world. Intact is not only our lead investor but also a carrier partner, a testament to the confidence the incumbent industry has in what we're building. Our investors:\nIntact Private Capital, led our Series B round\n\nCostanoa Ventures, led our Series A round\n\nSpark Capital, led our Seed round\n\nSusa Ventures, lead our Pre-Seed round\n\nY Combinator\n\nAnd several others\n\nOur Team\nWe're a team of technologists and insurance enthusiasts, bridging the two worlds together. Check out our About page to learn more.\nThe Role\nWe 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.\nYou will design and ship production AI systems that meaningfully improve how we evaluate risk, price policies, and operate our business.\nWhat You’ll Do\nPartner with product, engineering, underwriting, and data teams to identify high-leverage AI opportunities\n\nDesign, build, and deploy LLM-powered features across underwriting, pricing, and internal tooling\n\nDevelop AI agents and retrieval-augmented systems that extract structured insights from unstructured insurance data\n\nBuild production-grade AI infrastructure for model serving, inference, evaluation, and monitoring\n\nCreate internal AI tools that enable underwriters and operators to move faster with higher quality decisions\n\nEstablish best practices for prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and model reliability\n\nOwn AI features end-to-end from ideation to production\n\nWhat We’re Looking For\nStrong backend engineering experience building scalable APIs and distributed systems\n\nHands-on experience shipping AI-powered products into production\n\nFamiliarity with LLMs, RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector databases\n\nExperience integrating AI systems into user-facing or workflow-driven applications\n\nComfort with cloud infrastructure and deploying AI workloads at scale\n\nA product mindset and the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into concrete AI systems\n\nYou have at least 5+ years of working experience (preferably as a full-stack engineer) with a track record of delivering high-impact products\n\nBonus Points\nExperience building AI agents or multi-step reasoning systems\n\nBackground in applied machine learning beyond generative AI\n\nExperience with pricing systems, financial infrastructure, or risk modeling\n\nInterest in transforming legacy industries with modern AI systems\n\nWhy This Role Matters\nInsurance 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.\nYou will help define how applied AI transforms risk evaluation in high-hazard industries and shape the future of AI-native insurance infrastructure.\nOur Tech Stack\nFrontend\nReact & Next.js\n\nTypescript\n\nGraphQL w/ Apollo\n\nBackend\nNode.js\n\nPostgres & Redis\n\nTypescript\n\nGraphQL APIs\n\nHow we work\nShepherd runs on four values. Here's what each one means in this seat.\nThink big, build big. We exist to protect progress and the industries that rely on it. The work here is aimed at a system that runs on its own, and the roadmap gets sequenced backward from that rather than forward from what's easy.\n\nWin together. We rise as one. We support each other, raise the bar, and celebrate collective success. As the first PM you set a standard the rest of the team inherits, and the milestones belong to the team rather than to product.\n\nCross the aisle. Collaboration wins. We listen deeply, work across boundaries, and prioritize shared success over individual lanes. The best product calls here come from engineers who've sat with underwriters and underwriters who understand where the model breaks, and much of this job is listening closely enough on both sides to make that happen.\n\nGo get it. We act with urgency, move with confidence, take smart risks, and push forward with intention. Nobody hands you the roadmap, the data, or the meeting invite. You pull the failing runs, book the time with the underwriters, and decide what matters.\n\nBenefits\nPremium Healthcare\n100% contribution to top-tier health, dental, and vision\nFertility benefits and family building support\nUnlimited PTO\nFlexibility to take the time off, recharge, and perform\nDaily lunches, dinners, and snacks\nWe work together, and enjoy meals together too\nSF, NYC, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago and LA Offices\nProfessional Development\nAccess to premium coaching, including leadership development\nCompetitive 401(k) Plan\nDog-friendly office\nPlenty of dogs to play with and make friends with in the SF office","description_format":"text","description_chars":6201,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Professional development","Unlimited PTO"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Property & Casualty Insurance","InsurTech"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-02-24T10:17:23Z"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-25T19:34:47Z"}],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.199,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":217,"expected_fill_days":42,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-09-30T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":225000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/shepherd-software-engineer-applied-ai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/shepherd-software-engineer-applied-ai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-01T04:30:17Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3824,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":1176,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-02T00:00:00Z"}}}