Principal AI Platform Engineer

Athene • West Des Moines, IA

1d

About The Position

We are driven to do more. More for our customers and the financial professionals who offer our products. If you are driven to do more and love the challenge of pursuing more, Athene is your kind of company. You will find we offer more than the basics to create an inclusive and dynamic work environment at our various locations. Purpose: Athene’s Future Engineer Initiative is reimagining the software development lifecycle in the age of AI. We are building the foundation for agentic software engineering — where intelligent systems, model context protocols (MCPs), and developers collaborate to deliver secure, high-quality software faster and more reliably. We are seeking a Principal AI Platform Engineer to contribute to the design and implementation of this transformation. This role will work alongside other senior engineers, architects, and AI specialists to engineer the AI-augmented SDLC platform and embed intelligent automation into every stage of development. Your deep technical expertise and comprehensive understanding of industry-leading practices will guide and empower our engineering teams to deliver exceptional software solutions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience and 6+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, or architecture, with 1+ years in Generative or Agentic AI systems.
• Proven success designing large-scale developer platforms or toolchains that improved velocity, reliability, and compliance, i.e. Backstage.
• Deep experience as a Software Engineer or a similar role, with a strong understanding of software development life cycles and methodologies.
• Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript/Node.js, and cloud-native environments (AWS or Azure).
• Working experience with Claude Code CLI and integrating AI assistants or agents into developer workflows.
• Experience with LLM ecosystems — LangChain, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI assistants and agents into SDLC workflows (e.g., code review, test generation, CI/CD, and deployment automation).
• Experience defining and enforcing engineering standards and metrics (unit testing, branching strategies, deployment patterns, DORA metrics).
• Working understanding of responsible AI principles and secure enterprise data handling in regulated industries.
• Experience mentoring engineers and working collaboratively across multiple teams to deliver systemic improvements.
• Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Able to assess complex technical challenges and deliver practical, scalable solutions.
• Drive. Discipline. Confidence. Focus. Commitment.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design and evolution of the AI-augmented SDLC platform: help architect and implement the next-generation developer experience integrating AI agents, MCPs, and automation across build, test, review, and release pipelines.
• Operationalize AI engineering best practices: establish frameworks for RAG, vector search, and model evaluation; define standards for prompt engineering, versioning, and observability.
• Engineer for reliability and scale: ensure systems are extensible, testable, and compliant, embedding best practices from DORA’s AI Capabilities Model (healthy data ecosystems, small batches, strong version control).
• Lead by doing, embed with engineering teams to help implement AI-native workflows; provide mentorship and technical guidance to accelerate organizational adoption.
• Build agents and skills to assist with all aspects of software development — from architecture and code generation to deployment automation, testing, and operational diagnostics.
• Integrate AI capabilities into Athene’s Developer Portal to provide engineers with seamless access to intelligent tools, agents, and automation directly within their daily workflows.
• Collaborate across software, platform, and product teams to establish and maintain best practices in areas such as unit testing, branching strategies, architecture, cloud-native patterns, DevOps, and AI adoption.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees