Principal AI Engineer

Crum & Forster Company Overview

Crum & Forster (C&F) provides market leading property & casualty, accident & health, specialty and standard commercial lines insurance solutions. A true underwriting company, we have a 200-year history of helping our customers manage risk with laser-focused expertise, integrity and discipline. Our people are empowered to make decisions and problem-solve with you smartly and swiftly. Our annual gross written premium is 6.2 billion. C&F enjoys a financial strength rating of "A+" (Superior) by AM Best.

Our most valuable asset is our people. We have 3000 employees, and locations throughout the United States and India. With our employee-first focus, the Company is consistently recognized as a great place to work, earning multiple workplace and wellness awards, including the Great Place to Work® Award, Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, Fortune Best Workplaces for Parents, Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials, and many others.

C&F is part of Fairfax Financial Holdings. For more information about C&F, please visit our website: www.cfins.com

Job Description

Crum & Forster is seeking a Principal AI Engineer (GenAI & Agentic AI) to lead the AI solution architecture, and delivery of next-generation AI solutions that transform insurance operations. This role will drive the adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI across underwriting, claims, policy servicing, and corporate functions by building enterprise-grade applications, intelligent automation, and AI-powered assistants.

As a senior technical leader, you will partner with business and technology stakeholders to identify high-value opportunities, establish scalable AI architecture patterns, and deliver secure, responsible, and measurable AI solutions.

This is a unique opportunity to help build C&F's next generation AI capabilities from the ground up, influencing enterprise AI strategy, defining engineering standards, and delivering high-impact solutions in a largely greenfield environment.

This role is fully remote within the United States.

What you will do:

AI solution design and technical authority

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of enterprise-scale Generative AI and agentic AI solutions including the target-state solution design for generative and agentic AI - foundation model integration, retrieval-augmented generation, tool use, orchestration frameworks, and multi-agent patterns.
• Define the reusable AI capability and pattern library that federated teams build on, so that capability is built once and inherited rather than rebuilt.
• Leads AI solution design reviews across central and federated builds and provide technical sign-off within the AI readiness gates.
• Set technical standards for evaluation, groundedness, guardrails, observability, security and cost engineering, and hold builds to them.
• Evaluate AI platforms and tooling and recommend direction in alignment with Enterprise Architecture standards.

Hands-on build and delivery

• Personally design, build and deliver the foundational shared AI capabilities - platform, runtime, retrieval primitives, agent frameworks, and the evaluation harness.
• Lead the technical delivery of prioritized flagship initiatives that establish the pattern for everything that follows.
• Build AI-powered assistants, copilots, workflow automation, and knowledge retrieval systems that improve business outcomes and employee productivity.
• Leverage AWS Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, MCP and related technologies to build scalable, secure, and maintainable AI applications.

Standards, quality, and responsible AI

• Establish and enforce engineering practices for AI evaluation, model risk, observability, auditability, and responsible AI, in partnership with the AI Risk and Reliability Engineering Lead.
• Ensure every AI solution is instrumented for groundedness, quality, drift, and cost from the first commit rather than retrofitted before go-live.

Enablement and technical mentorship

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to AI engineers within the central team and to engineers building AI within federated development domains.
• Lead the technical Community of Practice: shared libraries, office hours, code and design reviews, and internal enablement on agentic engineering.
• Partner with external accelerators to absorb expertise into the ADLC practice, mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across AI platform and application development efforts
• Stay current on emerging AI technologies and recommend approaches that create business value.

What you will bring to C&F:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in computer science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, platform engineering, or AI/ML development.
• 4+ years of hands-on experience designing and delivering Generative AI, AI-Native, or LLM-based solutions in production environments.
• Demonstrated experience building agentic AI systems in production - orchestration, tool calling, retrieval frameworks, reasoning workflows, and autonomous task execution.
• Track record of defining technical standards or solution patterns adopted by engineering teams beyond the candidate's own team.
• Experience leading design review or serving as technical authority across multiple teams, without relying on direct reporting lines.
• Strong software engineering skills with expertise in Python and modern cloud-native application development.
• Hands-on experience with AWS and modern AI services such as Amazon Bedrock.
• Experience developing and integrating APIs, enterprise platforms, and distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture, security, governance, ADLC delivery and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives and influence architectural decisions across organizational boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience within Property & Casualty insurance or another highly regulated industry.
• Experience with Bedrock AgentCore, MCP, vector databases, knowledge retrieval platforms, and AI evaluation frameworks.
• Experience establishing AI evaluation practice - golden sets, groundedness and citation scoring, regression testing of model-based systems.
• Familiarity with AI observability, governance, model risk management, and responsible AI practices.
• Experience with FinOps or cost engineering for large language model workloads.
• Prior experience as a Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, Staff Engineer, or equivalent senior individual-contributor technical leadership role.

#LI-MS

#LI-REMOTE

What C&F will bring to you

• Competitive compensation package
• Generous 401K employer match
• Employee Stock Purchase plan with employer matching
• Generous Paid Time Off
• Excellent benefits that go beyond health, dental & vision. Our programs are focused on your whole family’s wellness, including your physical, mental and financial wellbeing
• A core C&F tenet is supporting your career development, so we provide a wealth of ways for you to keep learning, which may include tuition reimbursement, industry-related certifications and professional training to keep you progressing on your chosen path
• A dynamic, ambitious, fun and exciting work environment
• We believe you do well by doing good and want to encourage a spirit of social and community responsibility, matching donation program, volunteer opportunities, and an employee-driven corporate giving program that lets you participate and support your community

At C&F you will BELONG

If you require special accommodations, please let us know. We value inclusivity and diversity. We are committed to equal employment opportunity and welcome everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. If you require special accommodations, please let us know. Belonging at C&F, is a mindset. It’s about fostering a culture of inclusion and connection, where everyone feels valued, heard, and empowered to thrive and where our social impact efforts help strengthen the communities where we live and work.

For California Residents Only:  Information collected and processed as part of your career profile and any job applications you choose to submit are subject to our privacy notices and policies, visit https://www.cfins.com/onlineprivacypolicy/ca/noticeatcollection/  for more information.

Crum & Forster is committed to ensuring a workplace free from discriminatory pay disparities and complying with applicable pay equity laws.  Salary ranges are available for all positions at this location, taking into account roles with a comparable level of responsibility and impact in the relevant labor market and these salary ranges are regularly reviewed and adjusted in accordance with prevailing market conditions. The annualized base pay for the advertised position, located in the specified area, ranges from a minimum of $149,000 to a maximum of $220,000. The actual compensation is determined by various factors, including but not limited to the market pay for the jobs at each level, the responsibilities and skills required for each job, and the employee’s contribution (performance) in that role. To be considered within market range, a salary is at or above the minimum of the range. You may also have the opportunity to participate in discretionary equity (stock) based compensation and/or performance-based variable pay programs.