Staff AI Engineer

📋 Description

• • Join Newfront Insurance Services Inc., a WTW company, as a Staff AI Engineer and be at the forefront of revolutionizing the insurance industry. This pivotal role is instrumental in creating advanced agentic services designed to automate the mundane, time-consuming tasks that currently occupy 80% of brokers' valuable time. By developing sophisticated autonomous systems, including placement agents, fractional AI analysts, and intelligent workflow orchestrators, you will empower brokers to dedicate their expertise to high-stakes strategy and crucial relationship building, fundamentally transforming how insurance is managed.
• • As a Staff AI Engineer, your day-to-day responsibilities will be dynamic and impactful. You will be tasked with building innovative 0-1 AI systems that fundamentally reshape core brokering workflows. This includes developing intelligent submission processing systems capable of auto-extracting data from extensive documents exceeding 100 pages and intelligently routing complex commercial policies between AI agents and seasoned brokers. Furthermore, you will architect and implement autonomous AI solutions that enable brokers to efficiently manage an overwhelming volume of client renewals, potentially over 1000 simultaneously. This involves owning the entire technology stack, from initial prototype development through to robust production deployment.
• • A key aspect of this role involves embedding directly within brokering teams, collaborating closely with underwriters and operations personnel. Your mission will be to identify critical automation opportunities and co-create solutions alongside the very individuals who will utilize them daily. In essence, you will function as an internal Field Development Engineer (FDE), seamlessly blending the roles of a software engineer with that of a business strategist, ensuring that the AI solutions are not only technically sound but also deeply aligned with business needs and user workflows.
• • You will be responsible for shipping production-ready AI features that deliver tangible, measurable business impact. This includes driving significant improvements such as reducing quote turnaround times by an impressive 80%, dramatically increasing broker capacity by a factor of 10x, and enhancing placement success rates through the implementation of intelligent market matching and sophisticated risk assessment algorithms. Your work will directly contribute to the company's competitive edge and operational efficiency.
• • Establishing and maintaining rigorous evaluation frameworks for AI systems within the highly regulated insurance sector is a critical responsibility. This entails implementing comprehensive testing pipelines, developing robust hallucination detection mechanisms, and ensuring continuous accuracy monitoring to guarantee that all AI systems not only meet stringent compliance requirements but also achieve and sustain peak performance targets. Your commitment to quality and reliability will be paramount.
• • You will drive rapid experimentation cycles, leveraging modern AI development practices to accelerate the journey from initial concept to deployed solution, aiming for deployment within weeks. This rapid iteration will be underpinned by a strong emphasis on quality assurance through automated testing and the strategic use of progressive rollout strategies to mitigate risks and ensure smooth integration into existing workflows.
• • A significant part of your role will involve nurturing and developing the next generation of AI talent within the organization. This includes actively mentoring other engineers on the intricacies of building and deploying production AI systems, sharing invaluable learnings derived from real-world deployments, and establishing and promoting best practices for the development of reliable and scalable AI solutions within the financial services domain.
• • You will pioneer the application of cutting-edge AI research to address complex insurance challenges. This could involve exploring multi-agent systems for intricate underwriting processes or developing advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures to enhance policy knowledge management and retrieval capabilities.
• • Ultimately, you will own the complete product development lifecycle for AI initiatives. This comprehensive ownership spans from the initial discovery of business problems and the detailed technical design phase, through to the development of intuitive frontend interfaces that make powerful AI capabilities accessible and user-friendly for non-technical stakeholders, ensuring broad adoption and maximum value realization.
• • About the team or company: Newfront, a WTW company, is committed to a flexible work environment, supporting remote, hybrid, and in-office arrangements. The company fosters a culture of innovation and direct business integration, with small, specialized teams building production systems that deliver immediate, tangible value. They are dedicated to transforming the insurance industry through advanced AI and a people-centric approach.
• • What the person can learn or achieve: This role offers an unparalleled opportunity to gain deep expertise in building end-to-end AI systems from the ground up in a high-impact industry. You will master the application of cutting-edge AI research to solve real-world business problems, develop leadership skills through mentoring, and contribute to shaping the future of AI in financial services, all while working within a supportive and innovative environment that values diversity and inclusion.