Software Development Lead

West Des Moines, Iowa Full time

R254838

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 is entering the stable value market through a new institutional business line, creating an opportunity to build the technology platform that will power the administration of these products from the ground up. As the Software Development Lead, you will own the architecture, engineering, and operational excellence of the Institutional Administration platform—the financial book of record supporting contract administration, accounting, reconciliation, and financial reporting. This role offers rare end-to-end ownership of a greenfield platform supporting a strategic growth initiative with executive sponsorship and live business. Working closely with Finance, Actuarial, Treasury, Operations, and technology teams, you'll deliver scalable, AI-enabled solutions that help transform retirement services. At Athene, you'll be empowered to innovate, act like an owner, and accelerate your career while partnering with Apollo's industry-leading investment platform and a culture built on our BEAM values. Accountabilities: Lead the architecture, development, production support, and continuous evolution of Athene's Institutional Administration platform, ensuring scalability, resiliency, security, and operational excellence. Design and deliver enterprise integrations with financial, accounting, treasury, and operational systems while maintaining strong controls, reconciliation, and audit readiness. Partner with Finance, Actuarial, Treasury, Operations, and business stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into simple, reliable technical solutions. Champion modern software engineering practices, including AI-enabled development, cloud-native architecture, automation, observability, CI/CD, testing, and secure software delivery. Provide technical leadership through architecture reviews, mentoring, code reviews, and engineering standards while influencing a blended team of internal engineers and delivery partners. Lead production readiness, incident response, platform stability, and continuous improvement initiatives to ensure reliable delivery of business-critical financial services. Qualifications and Experience: 6+ years of relevant experience designing, building, and supporting enterprise software platforms, including ownership of business-critical production applications or relevant experience. Deep expertise developing cloud-native applications using Python, FastAPI (or similar frameworks), React/TypeScript, PostgreSQL, AWS services, infrastructure as code, and modern CI/CD practices. Experience building financial, accounting, insurance, or other highly regulated systems with strong understanding of enterprise controls, auditability, and operational excellence. Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tools to improve software delivery while maintaining accountability for architecture, code quality, testing, and security through strong engineering judgment. Proven critical thinker with a bias for action, adaptability, innovation mindset, strong communication skills, and the ability to influence technical and business partners across the organization. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience. Drive. Discipline. Confidence. Focus. Commitment. Learn more about working at Athene ( . Athene is a Military Friendly Employer! Learn more about how we support our Veterans ( . Athene is committed to inclusion and is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran status or any other status protected by federal, state or local law. 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. Athene