Professional Liability Underwriting Lead
Shepherd (Series B) · New York City · onsite
USD 200,000 to 240,000 per year
WHAT WE DO
Commercial insurance still runs on processes built decades ago. Underwriting is slow, and pricing leans on broad averages instead of the specifics of each risk. Technology can change how commercial risk is priced and managed, as long as it's paired with real underwriting expertise. The companies that get this right will shape the next era of the industry, and Shepherd intends to lead it.
Shepherd is a Managing General Underwriter (MGU) building the fastest and smartest AI-native commercial risk platform in the industry, where underwriters, data, and automation work together. The result is faster decisions for our broker partners and pricing that reflects the actual risk.
We started where the gap is widest: construction and energy, two of the most complex and highest-hazard segments in commercial insurance. Today we write Primary and Excess Casualty, Builder’s Risk, and Workers' Compensation distributed through a nationwide network of retail brokers. Our mission is to make risk frictionless for the builders and operators shaping the physical world, from concept through construction and into decades of operation.
🚀 OUR INVESTORS
Shepherd has raised over $67M, including a $42M Series B led by Intact Private Capital. Intact also partners with Shepherd to provide capacity across its insurance products. Shepherd is also backed by leading institutional investors, including Costanoa Ventures, Spark Capital, Susa Ventures, and Y Combinator.
🏗️ PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY UNDERWRITING LEAD
Shepherd is launching a Professional Liability product to support its existing Construction and Energy verticals as well as future verticals.The Professional Liability Underwriting Lead will play a lead role in building and shaping the new product expansion, with an initial focus on Errors & Omissions (E&O) and Miscellaneous Professional Liability (MPL). This is an opportunity to help define the underwriting strategy, go-to-market, and drive long-term profitable growth for the core pillars of Shepherd’s business. We're looking for someone with 8+ years of professional liability underwriting experience, a proven track record of leadership, deep broker relationships, and an entrepreneurial mindset who is excited to build something new with modern technology and a forward-thinking team.
🎯 ABOUT YOU
You are a builder who wants to shape the future of commercial insurance and do the best work of your career. You have deep professional liability expertise, a loyal broker network, and the drive to turn a blank page into a profitable book.
You'd be a great fit if you have:
- 8+ years of professional liability underwriting, with deep expertise across architects and engineers E&O as well as exposure to other industries such as technology, financial services, real estate, manufacturing or healthcare.
- A proven record of profitable growth: originating new business, quoting, binding, and building a professional liability book while managing to loss-ratio and combined-ratio targets.
- Strong technical command of risk selection, underwriting models, exposure and loss analysis, loss development and trends, pricing, and coverage across E&O and MPL.
- Strong technical command of risk selection, application and financial review, pricing, and coverage, including claims-made forms, retroactive dates, prior acts, extended reporting periods, retentions, and primary and excess structures.
- Sound judgment on manuscript endorsements, contractual liability, and emerging exposures across professional services, including technology, regulatory, and litigation trends.
- Established broker relationships at the regional and national level that can drive submission flow from day one.
- People leadership experience leading, mentoring, or managing underwriters, including setting authority and running underwriting audits.
- Executive presence to present strategy and results to leadership, capacity partners, and reinsurers.
- Comfort with ambiguity: you make sound decisions with incomplete information and adapt quickly as the business evolves.
- Willingness to travel about 25% to meet brokers, partners, and the team.
- A bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
💼 ABOUT THE ROLE
Shepherd's underwriting approach is client-centric with a heavy emphasis on an efficient process. Our goal is to leverage our technology and data to make quick, informed underwriting decisions tailored to our clients' specific needs.
In this role, you will:
- Define the strategy for professional liability, including target classes, lines of business, limits, attachment points, geographies, appetite, and growth and loss-ratio targets.
- Support the development of underwriting guidelines, rating approach, authority framework and referral rules.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Data to design the submission-to-bind workflow, pricing tools, and exposure and loss-trend views.
- Underwrite new and renewal primary and excess professional liability within your authority.
- Own premium, profit, loss-ratio, and retention results for the book.
- Use your broker relationships to drive submission flow in the first year, and actively market Shepherd's professional lines products at broker and client meetings, industry events, and through targeted business development.
- Hire, coach, and grow a team of professional liability underwriters as the book scales.
- Work with Corporate Underwriting to help set letters of authority, run underwriting audits, and coach from the results.
- Work with Claims, Actuarial, Customer Experience and Finance so the business is underwritten, serviced, and reported well.
This is a position based in our New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Dallas–Fort Worth offices.
💰 COMPENSATION
The base salary range for this role is $200,000 – $240,000, plus an annual performance bonus and equity in Shepherd. Offers within the range depend on experience and the relationships and market following you bring.
⚡ HOW WE WORK
Shepherd runs on four values. Here's what each one means in this seat.
- 🚀 Think big, build big. We exist to protect progress and the industries that rely on it. You're building a professional lines vertical meant to scale nationally, so the guidelines, products, and tools get designed for where the book is going, not just where it starts.
- 🤝 Win together. We rise as one. We support each other, raise the bar, and celebrate collective success. As the first underwriter in this vertical, you set the standard for every professional liability underwriter after you inherit.
- 🔄 Cross the aisle. Collaboration wins. We listen deeply, work across boundaries, and prioritize shared success over individual lanes. The best underwriting tools here come from underwriters who sit with engineers and data scientists, and much of this job is making that partnership work.
- 🔥 Go get it. We act with urgency, move with confidence, take smart risks, and push forward with intention. Nobody hands you the appetite, the broker list, or the first submission. You build the plan, make the calls, and bind the first deal.
🌟 BENEFITS
🏥 Premium Healthcare
100% contribution to top-tier health, dental, and vision
👶 Fertility Benefits & Family Building Support
🌴 Unlimited PTO
Flexibility to take the time off, recharge, and perform
🍽️ Daily Lunches, Dinners & Snacks
We work together, and enjoy meals together too
🏢 SF, NYC, Dallas–Fort Worth, Chicago & LA Offices
📈 Professional Development
Access to premium coaching, including leadership development
💵 Competitive 401(k) Plan
🐶 Dog-Friendly Office
Plenty of dogs to play with and make friends with in the SF office
#LI-Onsite
HOW WE WORK
Shepherd runs on four values. Here's what each one means in this seat.
- Think big, build big. We exist to protect progress and the industries that rely on it. The work here is aimed at a system that runs on its own, and the roadmap gets se