AVP, Engineering & Technical Product Owner

Athene is seeking an AVP, Engineering & Technical Product Owner to lead Vitera’s Software Engineering and QA teams. Reporting to the CTO, this role combines people leadership, technical product ownership, and hands-on engineering to shape architecture, technical direction, and delivery for applications including the VDX data exchange platform and Pricing Engine.

Leadership and Team Development

• Lead, empower, and develop the engineering organization, including Software Engineering and QA.
• Build an inclusive, high-accountability environment where team members take ownership, experiment thoughtfully, grow capabilities, and deliver outcomes tied to business goals.

Technical Architecture and Engineering Direction

• Own technical architecture and engineering direction across Vitera’s application portfolio.
• Make decisions across platform design, technology selection, engineering standards, AWS infrastructure, CI/CD, scalability, security, and technical debt.

End-to-End Delivery Ownership

• Drive end-to-end product and engineering delivery.
• Own the backlog and SDLC, spanning requirements and architecture through development, testing, release, and production deployment.
• Partner with the CTO and business stakeholders to shape the technology roadmap.

Hands-On Engineering and Continuous Improvement

• Stay meaningfully hands-on by contributing code and technical solutions when needed.
• Help the team solve complex problems, progress through ambiguity quickly, and continuously improve engineering practices.

Responsible AI-Enabled Engineering

• Accelerate AI-enabled engineering through responsible use of AI-assisted development.
• Champion practices that include code review, testing and QA automation, bug detection, and operational monitoring.
• Support the broader Vitera organization in identifying high-value applications of AI.

Technology Performance, Risk, and Governance

• Act as an owner for technology performance and risk.
• Communicate delivery status, critical paths, and risks to Vitera leadership.
• Support SOC 2 and SDLC governance, release management, vendor coordination, and technology budget planning.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant software development, engineering, or technology experience, including 4+ years of formal or informal leadership experience, with demonstrated success developing technical talent and leading teams responsible for production technology platforms (preferred).
• Deep software engineering expertise, including experience owning technical architecture and design for production platforms, with the ability and willingness to contribute technically when required.
• Experience leading Agile product and engineering delivery, including backlog management, roadmapping, requirements refinement, release management, and cross-functional prioritization.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern engineering practices, including AWS (preferred), CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, development and QA automation, and contemporary engineering tooling.
• Experience with tools such as Atlassian, GitHub, Terraform, and AI coding assistants is valuable.
• Strong critical thinking, communication, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to translate between technical and executive audiences, make decisions in ambiguity, challenge existing approaches, and turn ideas into action.
• Financial services, insurance, retirement, or fintech experience is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

Technologies

• AWS
• CI/CD
• Infrastructure-as-code
• Atlassian
• GitHub
• Terraform
• AI coding assistants
• SOC 2
• SDLC