VP Engineering

Athene • Austin, TX

1d

About The Position

Athene is hiring a Vice President, Engineering to build and lead the engineering organization for its new Innovation Hub in Austin. The role shapes the technology platform used to distribute and manage annuity and retirement products, with ownership of technical direction, engineering delivery, and operational performance across guarantee decisioning, calculation services, partner integrations, transaction workflows, and supporting data capabilities.

This is a hands-on leadership opportunity to establish a new platform and team for a strategic growth initiative with executive sponsorship. The VP will design core architecture, contribute to and review critical code, and recruit and develop engineers. The role also advances AI-enabled retirement solutions while modeling ownership, innovation, and Athene’s BEAM values.

Requirements

• 10+ years designing, building, and operating enterprise software platforms or relevant professional experience, including 5+ years of formal or informal leadership; stated as preferred.
• Demonstrated success building an engineering team or platform from an early stage, including recruiting technical talent, developing leaders, managing performance, and scaling delivery.
• Deep hands-on expertise in cloud-native, distributed, API-first systems, using technologies such as Python, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, AWS, event streaming, infrastructure as code, and modern CI/CD.
• Ability to personally design, write, review, and troubleshoot production code.
• Experience delivering financial services or other highly regulated systems, with strong understanding of enterprise controls, auditability, data integrity, and reliable operations.
• Fluency with AI development tools and success improving team adoption with measurable results.
• Commercial judgment, critical thinking, adaptability, and a bias for action; ability to communicate technical trade-offs clearly and influence executives and partners.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

• Strong connections to the Austin technology community.
• Knowledge of annuities, wealth platforms, custodians, or industry transaction infrastructure such as DTCC.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform’s technical strategy and architecture; establish a multi-year technical vision and translate business priorities into scalable architecture and delivery plans.
• Remain hands-on in critical design decisions, prototyping, implementation, and code reviews.
• Build and lead the Austin engineering organization by recruiting and developing engineering, data, and quality assurance talent; setting expectations; managing performance and resources; and developing leadership capacity.
• Oversee delivery of guarantee decisioning, calculation services, transaction and servicing workflows, and supporting data capabilities.
• Build API-first integrations with registered investment adviser platforms, custodians, planning tools, and distribution partners to enable straight-through processing.
• Establish engineering standards for security, accuracy, auditability, and data integrity; implement automated testing, CI/CD, observability, production readiness, incident response, and secure software supply chain practices.
• Establish tools, workflows, and guardrails for AI-enabled development; maintain accountability for architecture, code quality, testing, and security; measure delivery time, quality, and manual effort improvements; and scale effective practices.
• Partner with Product, Distribution, Operations, and Athene and Apollo leaders to define scope, funding, milestones, and expected outcomes.
• Lead build, buy, and partner recommendations; manage vendors and engineering partners; and remain accountable for delivery and business results.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive