Lead Software Engineer - AI Platform Team

Wellmark, Inc.•Des Moines, IA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

Wellmark is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join the AI Platform team within Information Products. This team builds the governed platform capabilities, reusable patterns, and engineering standards that help teams adopt AI safely, quickly, and consistently across the enterprise. In this role, you will lead the design and delivery of secure, scalable, and observable platform services that power AI-enabled products, agents, and intelligent workflows. You will serve as a hands-on technical leader, partnering with engineers, architects, product leaders, and governance stakeholders to shape how AI is responsibly adopted and operated at Wellmark.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field of study and at least 5 years of development experience (ex. Angular, NodeJS, Python, C++, .NET, Java, SQL) OR 9 years of related and applicable experience.
Strong analytical problem-solving skills. Accuracy and high attention to detail.
Previous experience troubleshooting and developing creative technical solutions.
Ability to provide innovative solutions to complex issues.
Demonstrated experience in software development lifecycle methodologies.
Demonstrated ability to communicate with and coach/mentor team members, while setting an example in maintaining a positive attitude, staying calm under pressure, being approachable, and respectful and taking responsibility for failures.
Big picture thinker with the ability to translate the value of the Wellmark as a Service (WaaS) strategy to company strategy when making design and development decisions.
Demonstrated, strong ability to gather information, perform necessary research needed for root cause analysis, problem definition and formulation, recommend solution implementation, verification, and ongoing optimization, using data to support recommendations.
Demonstrated ability to build relationships to reach outcomes that gain the support and acceptance of all parties.
Ability to communicate key information in a timely manner to the appropriate stakeholder audience with the ability to adjust communication style that will best suit the audience.
Ability to thrive in fast-paced environment with changing priorities.
Excellent organizational skills.
Strong time management skills with the ability to set and meet established timeframes with little direction, while assuring data and information integrity.
Eagerness to learn and stay current on industry trends and have a continuous learning mindset.
Ability to collaborate and work as a team to accomplish goals and/or solve problems.
Ability to earn trust and respect from peers, leadership, and stakeholders.
Ability to learn by actively listening and applying coaching feedback.
Ability to lead, support and work within a diverse development team model including global staffing, crowd sourcing, etc.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on engineering experience building backend services, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise-grade APIs or microservices, including RESTful and event-driven patterns.
Experience designing and delivering reusable platform capabilities, shared services, SDKs, templates, or internal developer enablement patterns that accelerate delivery across multiple teams.
Experience with AWS technologies such as CDK, Lambda, Step Functions, Bedrock, S3, SNS, SQS, EventBridge, DynamoDB, MongoDB, Aurora/Postgres, EC2/ECS, CloudWatch, Glue, AWS Batch, and API Gateway.
Deep experience with AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) or comparable infrastructure-as-code frameworks, including authoring, testing, and maintaining reusable constructs and standards.
Experience designing and implementing secure, compliant solutions in regulated environments such as HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar, including authentication, authorization, data protection, audit logging, and policy enforcement.
Experience with AI platform capabilities or reusable AI solution patterns such as model access routing, prompt lifecycle management, RAG templates, knowledge retrieval, chatbots, agentic workflows, or AI evaluation frameworks.
Familiarity with AI operations practices such as observability, telemetry, model/prompt benchmarking, quality evaluation, cost tracking, and compliance evidence capture.
Experience implementing automated testing strategies across unit, integration, and end-to-end levels, and hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Enterprise Actions or similar tools.
Exposure to real-time data pipelines, streaming integrations, or event-driven data processing.
AWS certifications such as Cloud Practitioner or Solutions Architect are a plus.
Prior experience in health insurance, healthcare, financial services, or another regulated industry.
Experience participating in proof-of-concepts, hackathons, stakeholder demos, or innovation initiatives.
Strong innovation mindset, resourcefulness, and ability or interest in mentoring/coaching others.
Experience working within an Agile team environment.

Responsibilities

Lead system development and engineering for highly complex programs.
Coordinate the preparation, coding, testing, and debugging of complex programs; including the analysis and development of workflows that utilize emerging technology and meet and exceed Wellmark’s evolving business needs.
Serve as subject matter expert in the implementation of innovative and cost-effective business solutions for multiple applications and systems utilizing information technology, business, and industry trends.
Provide leadership, training, and guidance to others on the team in the gathering of information, necessary research needed for root cause analysis, problem definition and formulation, solution implementation, verification, and ongoing optimization.
Ensure analysis of defects to find root cause and guide others in the identification of potential improvement opportunities.
Mentor, guide and problem-solve with other technology areas in the development and implementation of solutions, including how to use new or enhanced software/applications.
Coordinate with company resources to accomplish integration of products and processes and complex solutions.
Provide timely and accurate results, and exceptional customer service.
Utilize established relationships with Wellmark leaders and acts as a primary consultant on business status, issues, process improvements and technology enhancements or capabilities.
Participate in project proposals, estimates and proof-of-concept activities as needed.
Maintain awareness of industry’s best practices and standards and proactively participates in industry/knowledge reference groups relative to role.
Provide direction for enterprise standards.
Conduct code reviews and monitor standard adherence.
Other duties as assigned.