AI Native Software Engineer

The Role

This isn't a typical engineering role. As an AI Native Software Engineer, you'll work across product, engineering and architecture. You'll use AI tools to design, build and deploy software at pace. Instead of only writing code, you'll engineer the context, skills and steering that let AI models build secure and scalable applications, taking ideas from high level concept all the way to production. You will act as an AI Advocate, guiding teams on how to adopt AI effectively, sharing best practices, educating stakeholders and driving a culture that embraces AI powered ways of working.

This is an opportunity to

• Define how Aflac uses AI across the entire organisation
• Be at the forefront of AI adoption and innovation
• Shape engineering culture and future ways of working
• Help development teams embrace AI responsibly and effectively
• Apply AI native engineering to one of the largest modernisation programmes in Aflac's history
• Build something from the ground up and leave a lasting impact

The Team

The AI Services team helps transform how Aflac uses AI at scale where it matters. Taking priority use cases from concept to production, proving what works early, and packaging the results so other teams can repeat them. This team leads Aflac's AI harness engineering methodology, equipping engineers and product teams with AI driven workflows and setting SDLC standards that make AI available, safe and scalable.

One of our current priorities is modernising some of Aflac's longest running core systems. Using Aflac's AI harness engineering methodology, AI Services will support the delivery teams by shaping the methods and patterns that turn legacy code into robust, testable modern services. Every pass records the issues found and feeds them back into the next one. Over time, each migration needs less manual fixing.

AI Services Engineering runs as two functions. This role sits in the Context Engineering function, taking AI native products from concept to production and setting the AI harness engineering methodology behind them. The other function is AI Platform, owning the Agentic Platform: how Aflac runs agents at scale, cost efficiently and securely, with the right risk posture and robust operational controls. Alongside both sits AI Enablement, driving adoption, education and communication across the business. Two sides of one engineering team, working closely with the full AI Services team. You'll work with AI Platform to run agents on a secure, well governed foundation, and with QA, Solution Architects, Enterprise Architecture, Security and domain experts in an agile environment.

What you'll be doing

You will act as an internal influencer, creative problem solver and AI advocate, helping teams get the most value from AI development tools, from early exploration through to scalable deployment. We are looking for someone with a strong technical background who is energised by facilitation, communication and driving change across a large organisation.

Serving as a technical owner, this role uses AI as a force multiplier and human amplifier to achieve a level of velocity and productivity far exceeding traditional development methodologies.

AI Facilitation and Methodology Development

• Partner with engineering and business teams to help them understand and use AI tools effectively
• Develop, evolve and maintain Aflac's AI harness engineering methodology, including best practices, processes and repeatable frameworks
• Engineer the context, skills, steering and quality gates that make AI agents reliable on real work
• Build feedback loops that capture what goes wrong on every run and improve the next one
• Translate emerging AI capabilities into practical, accessible guidance that teams can put into action
• Provide hands on guidance in prompt design, workflow structuring and AI supported engineering practices

Innovation and Enablement

• Bring ideas to life in a scalable, enterprise ready manner that is user focused
• Champion the responsible use of AI tools and practices across engineering teams
• Lead internal workshops, demos and training sessions to build AI fluency and confidence
• Help engineers moving from legacy technology adopt modern, AI native ways of working
• Influence engineering culture by promoting responsible, efficient and innovative AI usage

Scaled Application Building

• Use AI to generate, refine and optimise high quality code across front end, back end, data and middleware layers
• Use AI to analyse legacy code, extract business rules and rebuild them as modern services on AWS
• Prompt AI to generate comprehensive test suites (unit, integration, end to end), and work with QA to prove new services behave like the systems they replace
• Configure and manage CI/CD pipelines using AI generated scripts and infrastructure as code
• Generate accurate and complete documentation (API references, system diagrams, feature guides) by prompting AI to analyse codebases and architecture
• Define scalable, secure and resilient architectures using AI generated infrastructure templates and security policies
• Ensure compliance with enterprise standards and regulatory requirements
• Use AI powered monitoring and diagnostics to detect, troubleshoot and resolve production issues

Skills and experience

Below is an overview of the skills and experience we are looking for, but remember, don't rule yourself out if you don't have everything on the list. It's your intellect and your attitude we are really after.

Essential Criteria

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field, or previous commercial experience
• 5+ years of industry experience in software engineering or application development
• Experience with AI driven engineering tools and techniques e.g. Kiro (Amazon Q Developer), GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor
• Experience with agentic AI workflows and steering techniques for reliable automation
• Ability to ensure alignment with architectural patterns, coding standards and performance
• Strong Object Oriented Programming skills (e.g. Java, Python, C#)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP)
• Strong problem solving skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Candidates must be based in Northern Ireland with the relevant Right to Work visa

Desirable Criteria

• AWS certification or equivalent in cloud services
• Familiarity with RAG architectures, embeddings and context management strategies
• Experience building agent skills, prompts or evaluation harnesses
• Experience with legacy modernisation, or exposure to mainframe technologies such as COBOL
• Experience with containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Proven experience with full stack development (front end, back end, APIs, databases)
• Familiarity with security best practices and compliance standards
• Familiarity with automated testing frameworks and QA processes
• Insurance domain expertise, such as experience with policy administration, claims or billing systems

So that's us. Thanks for taking the time to read this far. We look forward to hearing from you if you fancy joining an innovative tech company that runs locally but is supported by a well established, highly recognised Fortune 500 company in the US.

Aflac Northern Ireland is an equal opportunities employer.