Senior Software Engineer

Security-Benefit-; Des Moines (IA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PTO & holidays

Parental leave

Medical, dental, vision

401(k) match

Disability insurance

FSA

Life Insurance

Educational assistance

Employee support programs

Job summary

Security Benefit is seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer, Technical Lead, to guide architecture for the New Annuity Products team. You will translate business needs into scalable technical solutions, collaborate with vendor and internal teams, and lead the roadmap, release, and testing strategies.

A hybrid schedule with remote options is available, with leadership responsibilities across platforms.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 7 years of experience in software engineering or technical leadership with hands-on development.
• Experience providing architectural oversight of vendor-built or third-party platforms and their integrations.
• Track record of running vendor/software evaluations: due diligence, build-versus-buy/configure analyses, and leadership recommendations.
• Experience owning a product or platform roadmap and leading quarterly engineering planning.
• Experience with release management and improving testing coordination and automation.
• Experience defining and executing a technical debt reduction strategy across a platform or product line.

Responsibilities

• Partner with business and product stakeholders to translate needs into technical solutions.
• Own solution architecture for vendor-built systems and internal platforms to deliver new annuity products.
• Influence design decisions with vendor engineers and internal teams while rarely handling implementation yourself.
• Identify opportunities to automate deployment, testing, and operations at seams between vendor systems and internal platforms.
• Document processes, integration behavior, and future-state architecture and roadmaps.
• Facilitate integration of internal and third-party/vendor solutions across teams.
• Own architecture roadmap balancing business priorities, dependencies, and vendor constraints.
• Lead vendor and software selections, due diligence, and build-versus-buy analyses.
• Coordinate release and deployment across vendor and internal platforms, including tooling.
• Support QA with test automation and ensure testable integration points.
• Drive technical debt reduction and process improvements across platforms.

Skills

Architectural oversight

Technical leadership

Vendor evaluations

Release management

Test automation

Mentorship

Hands-on development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Vendor platforms (FAST, wmA, OIPA)

Job description

We're Looking for an experienced Senior Software Engineer!

About the Company:

Security Benefit is a leader in the U.S. retirement market with more than $75 billion in assets under management. We offer opportunities to thrive, innovate, and make an impact. As part of our team, you’ll play a key role in driving the future of the U.S. retirement industry. Security Benefit is a PLACE where we promise to help our customers To and Through Retirement®.

We’re proud to have been recognized as one of the best in the business:

• Named to Ward’s 50 list of top-performing life-health insurance companies
• Recognized on list of Ingram’s Top 100 Private Companies in the Kansas City area in 2025

About the Role:

Senior Software Engineer, Technical Lead, on the New Annuity Products team you are the technical throughline for the product: you take business requirements, assess what the vendor system can and can’t do, identify which internal platforms are affected, and produce the architecture for how these pieces work together to deliver the product. You partner directly with Financial Products leadership, the vendor's engineering and product teams, and other internal platform teams as a technical peer, and you set the technical direction for the solution architecture and for the team's growing set of deployment and testing tooling.

This is a leadership and strategy role first. You will occasionally write code — to prototype a solution, evaluate a vendor capability, or step in on a hard problem — but your primary output is sound architecture, clear decisions, well-run process, and a team that ships new and enhanced annuity products quickly and reliably.

The Senior Software Engineer position reports to the Senior Manager, Platform Engineering and can be based out of our home in Topeka or Overland Park, Kansas, Des Moines, Iowa, or remotely for the right candidate. We work a hybrid schedule, offering flexibility to work both remotely and on-site.

• Business Partnership & Solutioning. Partner with business and product stakeholders to understand needs, ask the right clarifying questions, and translate requirements into workable technical solutions.

• Architectural Oversight. Own the solution architecture for how the vendor-built policy administration system and Security Benefit’s internal platforms work together to deliver new annuity products, ensuring designs are sound, scalable, and consistent with the system of record.

• Design Influence. Influence and guide design decisions with the vendor’s engineering team and with internal platform teams, without necessarily writing the implementation yourself.

• Automation Opportunities. Continually look for opportunities to automate manual processes at the seams between the vendor system and internal platforms — deployment packaging, testing, and operational handoffs — to reduce toil and improve reliability.

• Documentation & Future State. Document existing processes, integration behavior, and system architecture across the vendor system and internal platforms, and define the future-state solution architecture and roadmap.

• Integration Facilitation. Facilitate the integration of internal systems and third-party / vendor solutions, acting as the connective tissue between teams.

• Roadmap Management. Own the solution architecture roadmap for how the vendor system and internal platforms come together to deliver new annuity products, balancing business priorities, technical dependencies, and vendor constraints.

• Vendor & Software Selection. Lead software and vendor selection: run technical due diligence, evaluate build-versus-buy and build-versus-configure trade-offs, and make recommendations to leadership.

• Release Management. Own release and deployment coordination across the vendor system and internal platforms — including the team’s own deployment tooling — covering planning, sequencing, and coordination across internal and vendor teams.

• Testing Coordination & Automation. Support QA’s testing effort by building test automation into the architecture — designing the seams between the vendor system and internal platforms so they’re testable, and equipping QA with the tooling to validate integration points.

• Tech Debt Strategy. Identify, prioritize, and drive down technical debt in the team's tooling & folding remediation work into the regular sprint cadence so it gets resolved rather than deferred.

• Process Debt. Partner with Product Management, Operations and other business teams to map how work is done today, eliminate process debt across the workflow, and automate manual and paper-based handoffs end to end — for example, exception handling on submitted business.

• Quarterly Planning. Bring feasibility assessments and cross-platform dependencies into quarterly planning, helping translate roadmap priorities into an achievable, well-sequenced plan.

• AI Mindset. Bring an AI-forward mindset to improve the efficiency and quality of both the annuity products and the software that supports them, and help the team adopt AI-assisted tools and workflows.

• Data & Reporting Planning. Plan and anticipate data and reporting needs ahead of the engineering teams, and partner with the Data Platforms team to plan for upcoming data platform needs.

• Incident Leadership. Lead incident response and post-mortems for complex production issues on annuity policy and transaction systems, and remain available off-hours for critical incidents.

• Mentorship. Mentor engineers on the team, review technical designs and architecture decision records, and serve as the team's go-to technical resource.

• Occasional Hands-On Development. Engage in hands-on development on an occasional basis — prototyping, spikes, or unblocking the team on a hard problem — while keeping the majority of your time on leadership, architecture, and process.

What We’re Looking For:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 7 years of experience in software engineering or technical leadership, including significant prior hands-on development experience — you understand the craft deeply even though this role is not primarily a coding role.
• Demonstrated experience providing architectural oversight of vendor-built or third-party platforms and their integrations, rather than only building integrations yourself.
• Track record of running vendor / software evaluations: technical due diligence, build-versus-buy and build-versus-configure analysis, and recommendations to leadership.
• Experience owning a product or platform roadmap and leading quarterly planning cycles for an engineering team.
• Experience with release management, and with standing up or improving testing coordination and test automation practices.
• Experience defining and executing a technical debt reduction strategy across a platform or product line.
• Working knowledge of full-stack, cloud-native architecture (TypeScript / React, REST integration, SQL / data, AWS) sufficient to guide design decisions and speak credibly with engineers and vendors, even if you are not writing production code day-to-day.
• Insurance, annuity, or retirement domain experience strongly preferred: familiarity with policy administration concepts such as surrender charges, MVA, living-benefit riders (GLWB), free-corridor withdrawals, and policy transactions.
• Experience with a vendor policy administration platform (for example, FAST, wmA, OIPA, or comparable) a strong plus.
• Comfort collaborating directly with external vendor engineering and product teams as a technical peer.
• Track record of quickly learning new domains, tools, and vendor platforms, and of using AI-assisted approaches to improve efficiency and quality.
• Financial services or other regulated-industry experience preferred.

Why Choose Security Benefit?

When you join our team, you’re not just getting a paycheck — you’re getting a career path full of growth opportunities, plus a robust benefits package that puts your well-being first. Here’s what you can expect as a full-time Security Benefit associate:

• Competitive salary and annual incentive bonuses to reward your contributions.
• 33 days of paid time off (including PTO, holidays, Volunteer Day, and days of significance).
• Paid parental leave after 90 days of service.
• Comprehensive medical, dental & vision insurance.
• 401(k) with company match, plus Profit Sharing & Savings Plan.
• Short- and Long-Term Disability Insurance to give you peace of mind.
• Flexible Spending Accounts for medical and dependent care.
• Life Insurance to protect your loved ones.
• Educational assistance to support your career development.
• Associate assistance programs for your personal and professional well-being.

Ready to Make an Impact?

We’re excited to meet you!

Security Benefit is an Equal Opportunity Employer.