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About This Role
Who Are We?
Taking care of our customers, our communities and each other. That’s the Travelers Promise. By honoring this commitment, we have maintained our reputation as one of the best property casualty insurers in the industry for over 170 years. Join us to discover a culture that is rooted in innovation and thrives on collaboration. Imagine loving what you do and where you do it.
Compensation Overview
The annual base salary range provided for this position is a nationwide market range and represents a broad range of salaries for this role across the country. The actual salary for this position will be determined by a number of factors, including the scope, complexity and location of the role; the skills, education, training, credentials and experience of the candidate; and other conditions of employment. As part of our comprehensive compensation and benefits program, employees are also eligible for performance-based cash incentive awards.
Salary Range
$139,400.00 - $230,000.00Target Openings
1What Is the Opportunity?
Travelers is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join a cross-functional, product-centric team helping Bond & Specialty Insurance (BSI) evolve through AI-native development. This role is a builder and the owner of technical vision, shaping product vision together with the product owner and designer, and identifying where AI agents and tooling create the most leverage for the users their product serves.
The successful candidate brings demonstrated experience shipping production AI agents and LLM-powered systems, proficiency with modern agent frameworks and orchestration tooling, and a track record of defining technical direction within a workstream or product area. The individual will complete advanced software engineering tasks end-to-end, including designing, developing, testing, debugging, documenting, monitoring, and shipping production AI agents and supporting tooling. The individual will partner with product leadership to define technical specifications, serve as a subject matter expert in agent frameworks and AI-assisted development, and provide hands-on technical leadership within the team.What Will You Do?
- Own the technical vision for your team’s products and shape product vision with the product owner and designer, including supporting data-driven business cases and collaborating on the roadmap to deliver on them.
- Design, build, and ship production AI agents that automate impactful parts of end-user workflows.
- Implement telemetry that supports product decision-making and reporting.
- Work hands-on with modern agent frameworks, LLM APIs, and orchestration tooling to deliver reliable, production-grade systems.
- Set direction for agent architecture, evaluation, and observability within the team.
- Investigate and resolve critical, high-impact issues affecting agent behavior, accuracy, and reliability in production.
- Apply current industry practices in AI, such as tool use, retrieval, evaluation, and prompt engineering.
- Engage stakeholders to align a product’s technical strategy with broader engineering goals.
- Mentor team members and contribute to a collaborative, cross-functional team environment.
- Continually expand expertise in agent frameworks, AI tooling, and the business domains your team serves.
- Perform other responsibilities as assigned.
What Will Our Ideal Candidate Have?
- At least one year of experience shipping production systems built on LLMs or AI agents (not prototypes or demos).
- Demonstrated experience with modern agent frameworks such as Claude Agent SDK, LangGraph, or AgentCore, and with LLM APIs from providers such as Anthropic or OpenAI.
- Proficiency with core agent engineering concepts: tool use, retrieval, multi-step workflows, evaluation, and observability.
- Strong software fundamentals, including distributed systems, API design, testing, and CI/CD, applied to AI-augmented systems.
- Experience defining and driving the technical direction of a workstream or product area, not just executing assigned tasks.
- Track record of identifying opportunities and influencing engineering or product strategy through technical insight.
- Adept at making decisions that involve a significant number of factors with broad implications.
- Communication - Strong communicator who possesses the ability to describe technology concepts in ways the business can understand, document initiatives in a concise and clear manner, collaborate effectively with teammates and others regardless of role, quickly extract core issues from discussions and meetings, give and receive constructive feedback, offer help when asked, and ensure everyone has a chance to share their thoughts and is heard; an attentive and empathetic listener.
- Leadership - Advanced leadership skills with the ability to take action even when there is no clear owner, inspire and motivate others, and be effective at influencing team members.
What is a Must Have?
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, related STEM field, or its equivalent in education and/or work experience.
- 6 additional years of software engineering experience.
What Is in It for You?
- Health Insurance: Employees and their eligible family members – including spouses, domestic partners, and children – are eligible for coverage from the first day of employment.
- Retirement: Travelers matches your 401(k) contributions dollar-for-dollar up to your first 5% of eligible pay, subject to an annual maximum. If you have student loan debt, you can enroll in the Paying it Forward Savings Program. When you make a payment toward your student loan, Travelers will make an annual contribution into your 401(k) account. You are also eligible for a Pension Plan that is 100% funded by Travelers.
- Paid Time Off: Start your career at Travelers with a minimum of 20 days Paid Time Off annually, plus nine paid company Holidays.
- Wellness Program: The Travelers wellness program is comprised of tools, discounts and resources that empower you to achieve your wellness goals and caregiving needs. In addition, our mental health program provides access to free professional counseling services, health coaching and other resources to support your daily life needs.
- Volunteer Encouragement: We have a deep commitment to the communities we serve and encourage our employees to get involved. Travelers has a Matching Gift and Volunteer Rewards program that enables you to give back to the charity of your choice.
Employment Practices
Travelers is an equal opportunity employer. We value the unique abilities and talents each individual brings to our organization and recognize that we benefit in numerous ways from our differences.
In accordance with local law, candidates seeking employment in Colorado are not required to disclose dates of attendance at or graduation from educational institutions.
If you are a candidate and have specific questions regarding the physical requirements of this role, please send us an email so we may assist you.
Travelers reserves the right to fill this position at a level above or below the level included in this posting.
To learn more about our comprehensive benefit programs please visit http://careers.travelers.com/life-at-travelers/benefits/.
Salary Context
This $139K-$230K range is below the median for AI Software Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $194K across 269 roles with salary data).
Role Details
About This Role
AI Software Engineers build the applications and systems that AI models run inside. They own the API layers, data pipelines, frontend integrations, and infrastructure that turn a model into a product users interact with. Every AI company needs engineers who can build the software around the AI.
The challenge is building reliable systems around inherently unreliable components. Models are probabilistic. They'll give different answers to the same question. They hallucinate. They're slow. They're expensive. Your job is to build an application layer that handles all of this gracefully while delivering a product that users trust and enjoy.
Across the 11,520 AI roles we're tracking, AI Software Engineer positions make up 5% of the market. At Travelers, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: building API endpoints that serve model inference with caching and fallback logic, designing the data pipeline that feeds context to a RAG system, implementing streaming responses in the frontend, debugging a race condition in the async inference pipeline, and optimizing database queries for the vector search layer. It's full-stack engineering with AI at the center.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
Skills Required
Full-stack engineering skills with AI integration experience. Python and TypeScript are the most common requirements. You'll need to understand API design, database architecture, and how to build reliable systems around probabilistic outputs. Experience with streaming, async processing, and caching patterns is increasingly important as real-time AI applications proliferate.
Knowledge of vector databases, embedding APIs, and LLM integration patterns (function calling, structured outputs, retry logic) differentiates AI software engineers from general software engineers. Understanding cost optimization (caching strategies, model routing, batched inference) is valuable since inference costs can dominate application economics.
Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI Software Engineer roles pay a median of $220,000 based on 1,688 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($184K) sits 16% below the category median. Disclosed range: $139K to $230K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($266,050) and AI Engineering Manager ($253,461). By seniority level: Entry: $112,320; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,830.
Travelers AI Hiring
Travelers has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Software Engineer. Positions span Hartford, CT, US, Atlanta, GA. Compensation range: $230K - $230K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (708 positions) offer remote work, while 10,737 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,257 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,766 roles, $260,550 median); Los Angeles (1,580 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI Software Engineer roles include Software Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, Backend Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager.
If you're a software engineer, you're already 80% there. Learn the AI integration patterns: RAG, streaming inference, function calling, structured outputs. Build a project that demonstrates you can wrap an AI model in a production-quality application with proper error handling, caching, and user experience. That's the portfolio piece that gets you hired.
What to Expect in Interviews
Technical screens look like standard software engineering interviews with an AI twist. Expect system design questions about building reliable applications around probabilistic models: handling streaming responses, implementing retry logic for API failures, and designing caching strategies for LLM outputs. Coding rounds test standard algorithms plus practical integration patterns like async processing and rate limiting.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 11,520 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 140 entry-level, 5,630 mid-level, 4,176 senior, and 1,574 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (708 positions). The remaining 10,737 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($266,050 median, 70 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($253,461 median, 58 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 476 roles).
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 11,520 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (8,769), AI Software Engineer (586), AI Product Manager (511). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (140) are outnumbered by mid-level (5,630) and senior (4,176) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,574 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (708 positions), with 10,737 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,480. Top-quartile roles start at $264,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $266,050 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,267 postings), Aws (1,178 postings), Azure (972 postings), Rag (924 postings), Gcp (715 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (572 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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