Sr Software Engineer (AI Team Lead)

$139K - $230K Hartford, CT, US Senior AI Software Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsClaude

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

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 our organization as we grow and transform our Technology landscape. Individual will complete advanced software end to end engineering tasks that span many parts of a system including designing, developing, analyzing, configuring, testing, debugging, troubleshooting, documenting, health monitoring/alerting, and implementing based on user or system specifications. Individual will also consult with users to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications, manage the effective use of resources, act as subject matter expert across multiple applications, systems and technologies, leverage technical and business knowledge to drive the planning and execution of complex initiatives, participate in the design/ development process, and provide technical leadership.What Will You Do?

  • Perform complex analysis, advanced level design, configuration and develop functions for impactful and high\-visibility tasks.
  • Take the lead on directing and implementing solutions to moderately complex, loosely scoped problems that are aligned with team goals.
  • Deliver efforts both independently and by leading other team members.
  • Lead investigation and resolution efforts for critical, high impact problems, defects, and incidents.
  • Act as a technology advocate, independently seeking opportunities where technology can be utilized to improve the business.
  • Provide technical guidance and mentorship while fostering a team environment.
  • Apply knowledge of current industry trends and techniques to formulate solutions within the context of assigned efforts.
  • Seek opportunities to expand technical knowledge and capabilities.
  • Perform other duties as assigned.

What Will Our Ideal Candidate Have?

  • Five years of programming/development experience.
  • Demonstrated hands\-on experience building or integrating solutions using large language model APIs or agentic frameworks in a professional software engineering context.
  • Experience contributing to or leading development of plugins, extensions, or integrations within a shared developer tooling platform.
  • Agentic Frameworks \& LLM Tooling – Hands\-on experience designing and engineering solutions leveraging large language models and agentic frameworks; familiarity with enterprise AI platforms such as Claude, SAGE, or AIDLC and the ability to apply them to real\-world software delivery challenges.
  • Plugin \& Marketplace Development – Demonstrated experience building and publishing plugins, extensions, or integrations within a developer tool ecosystem; ability to define contribution standards and drive adoption across engineering teams.
  • Cross\-Team AI Enablement \& Advocacy – Proven ability to champion AI adoption across multiple engineering teams, translating capability into practical workflows, identifying high\-value use cases, and coaching engineers on effective AI\-assisted development practices.
  • AWS \& MCP Platform Expertise – Experience building and deploying agentic solutions on AWS Agent Core or equivalent cloud\-native AI orchestration platforms; familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) server development, configuration, and integration within enterprise software ecosystems.
  • Enterprise AI Coordination – Demonstrated ability to coordinate AI initiatives across a large enterprise, including aligning stakeholders, navigating governance and compliance requirements, and driving consistent AI engineering standards across distributed teams.
  • Delivery \- Advanced delivery skills including the ability to determine the software design strategy and methodology to be used for efforts, use automated tests, analysis, and informed feedback loops to ensure the quality and production readiness of work before release, monitor the health of work efforts and that of adjacent systems.
  • Domain Expertise \- Demonstrated track record of domain expertise including the ability to develop business partnerships and influence priorities by identifying solutions that are aligned with current business objective and closely follow industry trends relevant to domain, understanding how to apply them, and sharing knowledge with coworkers.
  • Problem Solving \- Strong problem solver who utilizes data and proofs of concepts to find creative solutions to difficult problems, reflects on solutions, measuring their impact, and uses that information to ideate and optimize.
  • Also 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 are 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: $185K across 231 roles with salary data).

Role Details

Company Travelers
Title Sr Software Engineer (AI Team Lead)
Location Hartford, CT, US
Category AI Software Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $139K - $230K
Remote No

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 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI Software Engineer positions make up 7% 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

Aws (28% of roles) Claude (12% of roles)

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 $218,500 based on 729 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($184K) sits 15% below the category median. Disclosed range: $139K to $230K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.

Travelers AI Hiring

Travelers has 5 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Agent Developer, AI Software Engineer, AI/ML Engineer, Data Engineer. Positions span Atlanta, GA, US, Hartford, CT, US. Compensation range: $198K - $230K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 15% (635 positions) offer remote work, while 3,657 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,650 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (1,335 roles, $265,000 median); Los Angeles (708 roles, $214,112 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 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 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 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). 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 (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) 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 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 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 $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. 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 $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. 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 (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 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

Based on 729 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI Software Engineer positions is $218,500. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
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.
About 15% of the 4,317 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
Travelers is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI Software Engineer positions include Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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