IT Intern, Solutions Architecture - AI

Location: West Des Moines, Iowa, United States Department: IT Architecture

American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company is a leading provider of annuity solutions designed to help clients protect and grow retirement income. Part of Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we partner with more than 40,000 financial professionals and help fund over half a million retirements nationwide. Recognized by Newsweek as one of America’s Most Trustworthy Companies and named a Top Workplace in Iowa, American Equity fosters a collaborative and purpose-driven culture where employees are empowered to ignite their passion and help shape the future of financial services.

Headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, with satellite offices in New York, NY, American Equity provides opportunities for employees to support work across the enterprise, including our sister company, American National, headquartered in Houston, Texas.

GENERAL PURPOSE OF THE JOB

The primary role of the Solution Architect - AI Intern is to support ongoing architecture projects through research, solution design, software development, system documentation, and hands-on programming in a hybrid cloud environment. While the position may contribute to a variety of technology initiatives, its primary workload will focus on designing, developing, and improving solutions that leverage artificial intelligence to achieve business objectives. The intern collaborates with technical teammates and business partners in the financial industry to evaluate opportunities, build prototypes, enhance current processes and technology, and apply AI capabilities responsibly within the enterprise. The intern provides valuable support to professional staff within organizational functions that align with their field of study and contributes to ongoing projects while gaining hands-on experience in a structured, professional environment.

LAUNCHPAD INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

The American Equity Launchpad Internship Program is designed to identify, develop, and empower the next generation of talent. Through meaningful project work, mentorship, professional development, and networking opportunities, interns gain real-world experience while building the skills and connections needed to launch their careers.

The Launchpad Internship Program is a 10–12 week, in-person experience based in our downtown Des Moines office. Interns gain hands-on experience, collaborate with professionals across the organization, and contribute to work that drives meaningful business outcomes.

Program Highlights

• Contribute to meaningful projects that deliver real business impact.
• Receive dedicated mentorship from leaders and colleagues across the organization.
• Participate in an Intern Hack-a-thon focused on solving real business challenges and presenting innovative solutions to company leaders.
• Develop professional skills through learning sessions, leadership presentations, and networking opportunities.
• Engage in community service projects, Des Moines Intern Connections events, and social activities with fellow interns.
• Receive competitive compensation, including a housing stipend and recognition opportunities.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Participates and provides value to ongoing projects of assigned area.
• Prepares, codes, debugs, and tests programs and hybrid cloud environment.
• Creates and maintains various system diagrams and technology roadmaps.
• Assists with discovery of internal and external customers’ critical business issues and requirements.
• Ensures applications supporting American Equity are compliant, and technically resilient enough to meet established requirements.
• Analyzes and understand current, legacy, and future workloads to evaluate and implement areas of optimization, as well as the longevity and viability of the system or process.
• Conducts research and development around new technology concepts or implementations, while making technology recommendations that will help drive business value.
• Documents code changes and assists users in the development of procedures.
• Analyzes and demonstrates system solutions.
• Completes project and support tasks with guidance from mentor and department leader.
• Interface with peers across various department to collaborate on cross-functional projects.
• Performs other related work as assigned.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES

Direct Reports

General Description of Indirect Reports

EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE

• Actively pursuing an Associate’s degree or Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent from two-year college or technical school.

CERTIFICATES, LICENSES, PROFESSIONAL DESIGNATIONS

• N/A

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES

• Knowledge and skills in the use of specific computer software, programming languages, and public cloud (Python, AWS SDK for Python (Boto3), Amazon Bedrock Runtime and Converse APIs, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), Bedrock Knowledge Bases, Agents and tool use, Guardrails, vector databases, REST APIs, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, S3, IAM, CloudWatch, Git, automated testing, and CI/CD).
• Knowledge of fundamental architectures and patterns for generative AI solutions on AWS, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic workflows, prompt orchestration, model evaluation, responsible AI and guardrails, vector search, event-driven and serverless architectures, API-based integration, observability, security, scalability, and resilient cloud design.
• Knowledge of the principles, practices, methods, and techniques associated with software development and architecture.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Willingness and capacity to learn quickly and apply new knowledge.
• Ability to identify and problem-solve in a