Title: Senior Homeowners Underwriter - Hippo Plus
Location: Austin, TX / Dallas, TX / San Jose, CA / Morristown, NJ (Hybrid/Flexible)
Reporting to: Senior Manager, Underwriting
About Hippo:
Hippo was built on a promise: make homeownership effortless. Nearly a decade later, that mission still drives us. We use technology and data to help our customers stay ahead of problems and protect what matters most.
Today, that same tech-native approach powers our work beyond homeowners. Hippo operates as a diversified carrier platform, partnering with MGAs to deliver tailored program solutions that help them grow and deliver better customer experiences. Behind that work is a team that values ownership, curiosity, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
If you're energized by building what's next, we'd love to meet you.
About This Role:
We're seeking a Senior Homeowners Underwriter - Hippo Plus who brings both strong technical underwriting skills and a data-driven, big-picture mindset. In this role, you'll manage the full underwriting lifecycle for new and renewal homeowner's risks — including endorsements, reinstatements, cancellations, and non-renewals — while staying closely attuned to inspection data, loss trends, and market intelligence. You'll use these insights to recommend loss prevention actions and home maintenance interventions, recognizing that prevention is central to our overall risk strategy. Beyond day-to-day underwriting, you'll partner cross-functionally with sales, claims, customer support, and product teams to surface emerging patterns and coverage gaps.
About You:
Your analytical and critical-thinking skills are strong, and you're comfortable pulling insights together from multiple sources — inspections, claims and agent feedback. You're curious by nature, always asking "why" a risk played out the way it did, and you're comfortable backing guideline recommendations with evidence rather than just relying on precedent. You pay close attention to detail, especially when documenting trends, assumptions, and the reasoning behind your decisions. You're adaptable too — able to balance structured underwriting discipline with the flexibility needed in a fast-paced, experimental environment.
What You'll Do:
- Underwrite new and renewal homeowner’s risks while gathering market intelligence, spotting trends in inspection data, and documenting insights for product development
- Analyze risk information and make recommendations for inspections, loss prevention actions, and home maintenance interventions—recognizing that preventive maintenance is a key lever in our loss prevention strategy
- Evaluate endorsement requests, reinstatements, cancellations, and non-renewals in accordance with underwriting guidelines
- Synthesize feedback from sales agents, customers, claims teams, and inspections to identify emerging patterns, coverage gaps, and opportunities to refine underwriting guidelines
- Propose updates to underwriting guidelines and loss prevention thresholds based on data, inspection trends, and market conditions—contributing directly to the product evolution of Hippo Plus
- Address queries from claims, billing, customer support, and product teams, acting within your underwriting authority while escalating complex or precedent-setting issues
- Communicate effectively with distribution partners, claims teams, and leadership to resolve underwriting matters and share market intelligence that informs product decisions
- Document observations and recommendations in a structured way—building an evidence base for product strategy discussions with underwriting managers and leadership
What You Bring:
- 4+ years of P&C Homeowners underwriting experience with demonstrated ability to interpret underwriting guidelines, policy language, inspection results, and supporting documentation, as well as the ability to think beyond individual risk decisions to broader patterns and trends
- Bachelor's degree in finance, business administration, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
- Strong technical underwriting, analytical, and critical thinking skills—with particular comfort synthesizing data from multiple sources (inspections, claims, agent feedback, pricing models)
- Curiosity about the "why" behind risk outcomes; comfort making guideline recommendations based on evidence rather than precedent alone
- Attention to detail and accuracy, especially when documenting trends, assumptions, and decision rationale
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, experimental environment—balancing structured underwriting discipline with flexibility to test new approaches in a pilot product
- Excellent communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences (underwriters, product, claims, agents)
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office and data analysis tools—including comfort with pivot tables, basic SQL, or similar tools for trend analysis
Nice to Haves:
- Preferred experience with Socorta
- Familiarity with home maintenance and loss prevention preferred
- Prior experience recommending process improvements or changes to underwriting guidelines is a strong signal
Benefits and Perks:
Hippo treats its team members with the same level of dedication and care as we do our customers, which is why we’re fortunate to provide all of our Hippos with:
- Healthy Hippos Benefits - Multiple medical plans to choose from and 100% employer covered dental & vision plans for our team members and their families. We also offer a 401(k)-retirement plan, short & long-term disability, employer-paid life insurance, Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) for health and dependent care, and an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Equity - This position is eligible for equity compensation
- Training and Career Growth - Training and internal career growth opportunities
- Flexible Time Off - You know when and how you should recharge
- Little Hippos Program - We offer 12 weeks of parental leave for primary and secondary caregivers
- Hippo Habitat - Snacks and drinks available and catered lunches for onsite employees
The Morristown, NJ and San Jose, CA base pay range for this role is $85,000 - $120,000. Exact compensation may vary based on several job-related factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to: skill set, experience, education/training, location, business needs and market demands.
Hippo is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion.
Hippo’s applicants are considered solely based on their qualifications, without regard to an applicant’s disability or need for accommodation. Any Hippo applicant who requires reasonable accommodations during the application process should contact the Hippo’s People Team to make the need for an accommodation known.