# Software Engineer, Applied AI

**Company:** [Shepherd](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shepherd)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $170k – $220k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** LLMs, RAG, AI Agents, Vector Databases, Prompt Engineering, Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, Postgres, Redis, React, Next.js, Cloud Infrastructure
**Posted:** 2026-02-24

> Builds and deploys production AI systems including LLM-powered features, agents, and RAG for underwriting, pricing, and risk evaluation in insurance. Requires 5+ years backend experience, hands-on AI product shipping, and familiarity with LLMs and vector DBs.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Do
- Partner with product, engineering, underwriting, and data teams to identify high-leverage AI opportunities
- Design, build, and deploy **LLM-powered features** across underwriting, pricing, and internal tooling
- Develop **AI agents** and retrieval-augmented systems that extract structured insights from unstructured insurance data
- Build production-grade AI infrastructure for model serving, inference, evaluation, and monitoring
- Create internal AI tools that enable underwriters and operators to move faster with higher quality decisions
- Establish best practices for **prompt engineering**, evaluation frameworks, and model reliability
- Own AI features end-to-end from ideation to production

## What We’re Looking For
- Strong **backend engineering** experience building scalable APIs and distributed systems
- Hands-on experience shipping **AI-powered products** into production
- Familiarity with **LLMs**, **RAG architectures**, embeddings, and **vector databases**
- Experience integrating AI systems into user-facing or workflow-driven applications
- Comfort with **cloud infrastructure** and deploying AI workloads at scale
- A product mindset and the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into concrete AI systems
- You have at least **5+ years** of working experience (preferably as a full-stack engineer) with a track record of delivering high-impact products

**Bonus Points**
- Experience building **AI agents** or multi-step reasoning systems
- Background in applied machine learning beyond generative AI
- Experience with pricing systems, financial infrastructure, or risk modeling
- Interest in transforming legacy industries with modern AI systems

## Tech Stack
**Frontend**  
React & Next.js  
Typescript  
GraphQL w/ Apollo  

**Backend**  
Node.js  
Postgres & Redis  
Typescript  
GraphQL APIs

## Benefits
- Premium Healthcare (100% contribution to top-tier health, dental, and vision)
- Fertility benefits and family building support
- Unlimited PTO
- Daily lunches, dinners, and snacks
- Offices: SF, NYC, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, LA
- Professional Development (premium coaching, leadership development)
- Competitive 401(k) Plan
- Dog-friendly office (SF)

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/5a57a661-f049-49b9-8282-fc35a4f85f55
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/5a57a661-f049-49b9-8282-fc35a4f85f55