AI Engineering Leader

Vertafore; Colorado; On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Vertafore is seeking an AI Engineering Leader to own delivery for a core AI domain, managing a small team of engineers while staying hands-on. You will design, evaluate, and ship AI-based features, review PRs, and drive architectural decisions while maintaining close involvement in code.

Your leadership multiplies the team’s impact, with a focus on reliability and production readiness. You will oversee end-to-end AI system delivery, including LLM-powered features, ETL pipelines, and document

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in machine learning, AI engineering, or applied data science.
• 1-3+ years of direct people management or formal tech lead experience with responsibility for team delivery.
• Hands-on production experience with one or more of: LLM-powered applications, agentic workflows, document extraction pipelines, or classical ML systems.
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with the modern AI engineering stack — LangChain/LangGraph (or equivalent), vector databases, prompt engineering, and model evaluation tooling.
• Experience deploying and operating AI systems in a cloud environment (AWS preferred).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to write a crisp design doc, run a productive design review, and give clear status to non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of engineers, setting technical direction and development paths.
• Oversee end-to-end delivery of AI features within the domain from design to production.
• Review code, participate in design reviews, and contribute to critical-path work when needed.
• Establish engineering standards for testing, observability, and deployment practices.
• Collaborate with product managers to translate business problems into a roadmap.
• Engage with customers or success teams to ground work in real-world usage patterns.

Skills

AI leadership

Team management

Python

Production ML

LangChain

Vector databases

Model evaluation tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Math

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Vector databases

Model evaluation tooling

Job description

$200,000 - $300,000 Total Compensation

The insurance industry runs on Vertafore. We equip agencies, MGAs, and carriers with the core digital systems, specialized AI, and data-driven foundation to eliminate distribution drag across the insurance lifecycle, spanning sales, servicing, and back-office operations. Underpinned by unmatched speed and performance power, we are the trusted backbone that’s taking the insurance industry from friction to flow with Distribution Velocity - speed, performance, and trust - to drive growth at scale. With over 95% of the top agencies and insurers and 50% of industry compliance transactions running through Vertafore, we lead at the intersection of innovation and trust, giving insurance professionals the confidence to transform and win in the AI era. Our reach is global, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and offices across the U.S., Canada, and India.

About The Role

Vertafore's AI organization is moving fast — from agentic workflows to intelligent document processing and predictive analytics. These systems are in production, serving thousands of agencies and carriers across North America, and the bar for reliability, scalability, and craft is high. We’re looking for an AI Engineering Leader who leads from the front. You'll own delivery for one of our core AI product domains, managing a small team of engineers while staying close enough to the work that you're the person your team turns to when the architecture gets hard. You’ll be a hands on leader with expertise in designing, evaluating, and shipping AI based features. This is not a role for someone who has stepped fully away from the code. You are an active participant in the team, reviewing PR’s, making technical decisions, and writing code. Your value multiplier is the team you build and enable, but your credibility comes from the depth you bring.

What You'll Do

Lead a High-Performing AI Engineering Team

• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of 4-8 engineers. Running 1:1s, setting technical direction, and creating clear paths for individual development
• Foster a culture of rigor, fast iteration, and creative problem solving. Build a team where engineers are empowered to raise problems early and move from experiment to production without unnecessary friction
• Partner with recruiting to hire strong AI engineering talent and retain it through meaningful work and clear growth

Own Technical Delivery for Your Domain

• Drive the end-to-end delivery of AI features and systems within your team's scope, from design to deployment to post-production observability
• Be the accountable technical voice for your domain: scope estimates, architectural decisions, tradeoff documentation, and post-mortems all run through you
• Work closely with a product manager to translate customer problems and business priorities into a well‑sequenced engineering roadmap

Stay Hands‑On at the Right Level

• Contribute meaningfully to system design, code reviews, and debugging when it matters with a focus on greenfield work, critical path systems, or when the team is blocked
• Set and uphold engineering standards for your team: testing strategy, evaluation frameworks, model observability, and responsible deployment practices
• Know when to write the code yourself and when your highest‑leverage move is unblocking someone else

Build and Operate Production AI Systems

• Oversee the design and operation of LLM‑powered features, ETL pipelines, agentic workflows, and/or document extraction systems
• Maintain a high bar for production quality: latency, cost, reliability, and behavioral consistency across a diverse multi‑tenant customer base
• Build feedback loops and monitoring that detect model drift, degraded outputs, and edge case failures before customers do

Collaborate Across the Organization

• Work with peer engineering teams, platform engineering, and data engineering to share infrastructure, avoid duplication, and raise the AI platform's overall capability
• Communicate clearly to surface risks early, quantify tradeoffs, and clear a path to rapid development and iteration for you team
• Occasionally engage directly with customers, customer success, or implementation teams to ground your team's work in real‑world usage patterns

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in machine learning, AI engineering, or applied data science
• 1-3+ years of direct people management or formal tech lead experience with responsibility for team delivery
• Hands‑on production experience with one or more of: LLM‑powered applications, agentic workflows, document extraction pipelines, or classical ML systems
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with the modern AI engineering stack — LangChain/LangGraph (or equivalent), vector databases, prompt engineering, and model evaluation tooling
• Experience deploying and operating AI systems in a cloud environment (AWS preferred)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to write a crisp design doc, run a productive design review, and give clear status to non‑technical stakeholders
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in B2B SaaS, insurance, financial services, or another regulated vertical
• Familiarity with MLOps tooling
• Exposure to intelligent document processing, for example parsing PDFs, structured tables, or semi‑structured data at scale
• Experience with LLM observability and AI gateway tooling (e.g., LangSmith, Helicone, Portkey, LiteLLM)
• Background building systems with human‑in‑the‑loop workflows and agentic task orchestration

Why This Role

You’ll have real ownership — of a team, of a technical domain, and of shipped product used by insurance professionals across North America. You'll have leadership who is fully committed to delivering real AI value to customers and invest in your growth. And you'll be operating in an industry that is genuinely early in its AI transformation, with the data, infrastructure, and customer relationships already in place to make the work matter.

Additional Requirements And Details

• Travel required up to 10% of the time.
• Located and working from an office location.
• Occasional lifting and/or moving up to 10 pounds.
• Frequent repetitive hand and arm movements required to operate a computer.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision (working on a computer, etc.).
• Frequent sitting and/or standing.

THE VERTAFORE STORY

Over the past 50 years, Vertafore has advanced the entire insurance distribution channel with the best software solutions in the industry. Today, we’re proud to say hundreds of thousands of Vertafore users rely on our solutions to write business faster, reduce costs, and fuel growth by increasing collaboration and streamlining processes. Vertafore leads the industry with secure, cloud‑based mobile products that provide superior reporting and analytics, delivering actionable insight— right when customers need it most. We partner with other leading technology companies to deliver comprehensive solutions to improve the way our customers do business and serve their customers.

The Vertafore Way

Insurance is about relationships, and technology should make those relationships stronger. That’s why, at Vertafore, it’s our mission to transform the way the industry operates by putting people at the heart of insurance technology. By focusing on our customers, becoming better every day, and delivering results you can see, we provide the level of trust and security that insurance is all about.

• Bias to Action: We're united by an innate drive to take action and make a difference in the technology and insurance spaces.
• Win Together: We work together as one team, showing empathy and respect along the way.
• Show Up Curious: We work to challenge one another to push boundaries and think beyond the box.
• Say It, Do It: We honor every one of our commitments because integrity is important to us.
• Customer Success is Our Success: We cultivate authentic relationships and follow up by actively listening to their needs.
• We Love Insurance: We appreciate the impact insurance has on the world.

Why Vertafore is the place for you:

Canada Only

• The opportunity to work in a space where modern technology meets a stable and vital industry
• Medical, vision & dental plans
• Life, AD&DD
• Short Term and Long Term Disability
• Pension Plan & Employer Match
• Maternity, Paternity and Parental Leave
• Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP)
• Education Assistance
• Additional programs - Employee Referral and Internal Recognition

Why Vertafore is the place for you:

US Only

• The opportunity to work in a space where modern technology meets a stable and vital industry
• We have a Flexible First work environment! Our North America team members use our offices for collaboration, community and team-building, with members asked to sometimes come into an office and/or travel depending on job responsibilities. Other times, our teams work from home or a similar environment.
• Medical, vision & dental plans
  • PPO & high‑deductible options
• Health Savings Account & Flexible Spending Accounts Options:
  • Health Care FSA
  • Dental & Vision FSA
  • Dependent Care FSA
  • Commuter FSA
• Life, AD&DD (Basic & Supplemental), and Disability
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plain & Employer Match
• Supplemental Plans - Pet insurance, Hospital Indemnity, and Accident Insurance
• Parental Leave & Adoption Assistance
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Education & Legal Assistance
• Additional programs - Tuition Reimbursement, Employee Referral, Internal Recognition, and Wellness
• Commuter Benefits (Denver)

The selected candidate must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this job. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the job responsibilities, duties, skill, or working conditions. In addition, this document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an "at will" relationship.

Vertafore strongly supports equal employment opportunity for all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law.

We do not accept resumes from agencies, headhunters, or other suppliers who have not signed a formal agreement with us.

Professional Services (PS) and Customer Success (CX) bonus plans

These are a quarterly monetary bonus plan based upon individual and practice performance against specific business metrics. Eligibility is determined by several factors including: start date, good standing in the company, and actives status at time of payout.

The Vertafore Incentive Plan (VIP)

It is an annual monetary bonus for eligible employees based on both individual and company performance. Eligibility is determined by several factors including: start date, good standing in the company, and actives status at time of payout.

Commission plans

They are tailored to each sales role but common components include quota, MBO's and ABPMs. Salespeople receive their formal compensation plan within 30 days of hire.

Vertafore is a drug free workplace and conducts preemployment drug and background screenings.

We do not accept resumes from agencies, headhunters or other suppliers who have not signed a formal agreement with us.

We want to make sure our recruiting process is accessible for everyone. if you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact [e-mail]