Athene · 2 days ago
Principal AI Engineer
West Des Moines, IA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
6+ years expAthene is a company driven to do more for its customers and financial professionals. They are seeking a Principal AI Engineer to contribute to the design and implementation of an AI-augmented software development lifecycle, collaborating with senior engineers and AI specialists to enhance software engineering practices.
FinanceFinancial ServicesInsuranceRetirement
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
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience with 6+ years in software, platform, or systems engineering, including hands-on experience with Generative or Agentic AI systems
Proven success designing and operating large-scale, cloud-native developer platforms or toolchains that improve engineering velocity, reliability, and compliance
Strong expertise in modern SDLCs and software architecture, with proficiency in Python, TypeScript/Node.js, and AWS or Azure environments
Demonstrated experience integrating AI assistants and agentic workflows into the SDLC (e.g., code generation/review, testing, CI/CD, deployment), using LLM and agent frameworks such as LangChain, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, or equivalent
Ability to define and enforce engineering standards, metrics, and responsible AI practices, while mentoring engineers and collaborating across teams to deliver scalable, systemic improvements
Company
Athene
Athene Holding is a life insurance company that provides retirement savings products for individuals and institutions.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Athene has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (17)
2024 (28)
2023 (24)
2022 (22)
2021 (22)
2020 (14)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$4.43B2025-06-24Post Ipo Debt· $600M
2025-05-14Post Ipo Debt· $1B
2024-10-07Post Ipo Debt· $600M
Leadership Team
Martin P. Klein
Executive VP & CFO
Mike Downing
Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Athene Holding Ltd.
Recent News
2026-01-16
The Motley Fool
2025-11-07
Company data provided by crunchbase