Principal Engineer

Athene•Austin, CO

12d

About The Position

Athene is building a founding engineering team in Austin to develop technology for distributing and managing annuity and retirement products. The Principal Engineer will provide hands-on technical leadership for a new platform, initially focused on product rules and calculation services for guarantee decisioning, along with interfaces that let AI systems use those services safely. The role designs and delivers critical software, guides complex engineering decisions, and establishes practices that support speed, quality, and accountability. The position works with executive sponsorship and collaborates with Product, Actuarial, Operations, and engineering teams. It combines production software development and technical leadership with a focus on controls, reliability, AI-assisted development, mentoring, and the simplification of platform solutions.

Requirements

At least 6 years designing, building, and operating production software systems, or relevant professional experience; listed as preferred.
Demonstrated success guiding complex technical designs and delivering software collaboratively with other experienced engineers.
Demonstrated expertise using multiple AI coding agents to deliver production software, including task decomposition, orchestration, automated validation, and review.
Ability to explain and substantiate the impact of AI coding agents on delivery speed and quality, and independently evaluate and troubleshoot generated code.
Deep hands-on expertise in cloud-native, distributed, API-first systems, with technologies such as Python, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, AWS, event streaming, infrastructure as code, and modern CI/CD.
Experience developing interfaces and controls for AI agents, including tool or Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, permissions, safeguards, and evaluations.
Experience building systems in financial services or another highly regulated environment, with strong attention to accuracy, security, auditability, and data integrity.
Clear written communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and the ability to influence and mentor through technical expertise.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with rules engines, calculation or pricing services, or annuity and retirement products.

Responsibilities

Design and build core platform services, translating business and actuarial requirements into scalable product rules, calculation services, and APIs.
Partner with Product, Actuarial, Operations, and engineering teams to align designs, dependencies, and delivery priorities.
Deliver critical software, build prototypes, define system interfaces, and solve complex implementation challenges.
Write and review production code, lead design reviews, and create technical documentation for engineers and coding agents.
Design platform controls for calculation accuracy, auditability, data integrity, security, and reliable operations.
Develop interfaces that allow AI agents to interact with financial services using appropriate permissions, validation, and safeguards.
Use AI coding agents by decomposing work, coordinating multiple agents, and establishing testing and review gates; remain accountable for the software delivered and assess delivery-time, quality, and engineering-effort impacts.
Strengthen automated testing, CI/CD, observability, release controls, and production readiness.
Investigate incidents, address underlying causes, and improve systems and practices to prevent recurrence.
Reuse existing capabilities where practical, make sound technical trade-offs, and reduce unnecessary complexity.
Mentor engineers through design discussions, code reviews, and pairing so the team can make effective decisions independently.