Director of Engineering

Sertis is a specialty insurance MGA focused on property and casualty insurance for multifamily property owners. We combine traditional underwriting expertise with operational property data to better understand risk and help owners actively improve it.

A central element of our strategy is the Sertis Risk Indicator (SRI) , our proprietary risk scoring methodology that uses property-level operational and risk-management data to provide greater insight into the underlying quality of a risk.

We are looking for a Director of Engineering who can help us substantially expand this advantage.

The Role

The Director of Engineering will lead the development and execution of Sertis’ technology strategy, with particular emphasis on AI-enabled underwriting, data analytics, and the continued development of the SRI platform .

This is not an IT infrastructure role. We are looking for someone who can work closely with underwriting and company leadership to identify where technology, AI, automation, and proprietary data can materially improve how Sertis evaluates, prices, manages, and monitors risk.

The person should be equally comfortable discussing underwriting workflows with business leaders, working with engineers and outside development resources, evaluating AI technologies, and rolling up their sleeves to do some of the work themselves when necessary.

Key Responsibilities

AI and Underwriting Technology

• Identify and implement opportunities to incorporate AI into underwriting workflows and throughout the entire business.
• Develop tools that help underwriters analyze submissions, identify risk factors, summarize information, detect anomalies, and make faster and better-informed decisions.
• Explore agentic AI and other emerging technologies that can automate portions of underwriting while maintaining appropriate human oversight.
• Help create an underwriting technology roadmap that improves both efficiency and underwriting quality.

Sertis Risk Indicator and Data Analytics

• Lead the continued development of the proprietary Sertis Risk Indicator.
• Analyze relationships among property operating behavior, risk-management activity, claims, loss frequency, loss severity, pricing, and renewal outcomes.
• Determine which data points are genuinely predictive of insurance performance and continuously refine the SRI methodology accordingly.
• Develop analytical tools and dashboards that allow underwriting and management to understand risk at the individual property, portfolio, and program level.
• Identify new internal and external datasets that can improve risk selection and underwriting accuracy.
• Help establish a growing proprietary data asset that becomes increasingly valuable as Sertis writes more business.

Technology and Product Leadership

• Translate business and underwriting requirements into practical technology solutions.
• Establish priorities and manage a technology roadmap across internal systems, underwriting tools, data infrastructure, and integrations.
• Work with internal resources, vendors, software developers, data providers, and technology partners.
• Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions and select appropriate platforms, vendors, and AI technologies.
• Ensure that Sertis maintains appropriate standards for security, reliability, data governance, and access to sensitive insurance and customer information.

Systems and Integration

• Improve integration among Sertis' underwriting, policy administration, CRM, claims, risk-management, and reporting systems.
• Create a reliable data architecture that allows information from multiple systems to be analyzed together.
• Reduce manual processes and duplicate data entry wherever technology can provide a better solution.
• Establish clear ownership and documentation of critical systems, integrations, data flows, and technology vendors.

Ideal Background

We are less concerned with a particular career path than with demonstrated ability to build and deploy useful technology in data-intensive business environments.

Strong candidates are likely to have:

• 7+ years of experience in technology, software, data, product engineering, or related disciplines.
• Experience leading technology initiatives while remaining sufficiently technical to evaluate architecture, data, APIs, AI tools, and development approaches.
• Strong understanding of modern AI technologies, including large language models, AI agents, retrieval systems, workflow automation, and machine learning.
• Significant experience working with large datasets and translating data into useful business insights.
• Experience with data architecture, APIs, cloud platforms, databases, analytics, and business intelligence tools.
• Experience managing software developers, outside development firms, or technical vendors.
• Strong product instincts and the ability to distinguish interesting technology from technology that creates measurable business value.
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and nontechnical colleagues.

Experience in insurance, InsurTech, underwriting technology, property technology, financial services, or another highly data-driven regulated industry is strongly preferred but not necessarily required.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 6-12 months, we would expect the Director of Engineering to:

• Establish a clear technology and AI roadmap for Sertis.
• Deploy meaningful AI capabilities into the underwriting process.
• Reduce manual underwriting work and improve access to relevant underwriting information.
• Create a more robust data environment connecting underwriting, SRI, policy, property, and claims information.
• Establish a disciplined analytical process for determining which SRI factors correlate with actual insurance outcomes.
• Improve the predictive value and usefulness of the SRI.
• Give management significantly better visibility into portfolio risk and underwriting performance.
• Identify additional proprietary data and technology opportunities that can strengthen Sertis' competitive advantage.