Product Performance Actuary

Lead Actuarial Modeler - Mortality

About

Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

Ethos is looking for an experienced actuary to lead our mortality analytics and actuarial assumption modeling. You will serve as the company’s expert on mortality, translating complex insights into strategies that improve our product competitiveness and financial integrity. We’re seeking someone with a strong foundation in life insurance mortality modeling who brings deep actuarial expertise and enjoys tackling open-ended problems. Building new methodologies where playbooks don’t exist. You’re energized by the chance to apply AI and emerging techniques to problems insurance companies have solved the same way for decades, and you know how to align actuarial rigor with product velocity across finance, product, and underwriting teams.

Responsibilities

• Own mortality-related assumptions and other actuarial inputs across product development, forecasting, and financial reporting.
• Lead the development and maintenance of expected mortality models, assumption frameworks, and experience studies.
• Leverage leading data points, such as post-issue audit data and mortality risk scores, to predict mortality before experience is fully credible.
• Monitor actual-to-expected mortality experience and work collaboratively with underwriting and data science teams.
• Design and complete protective value studies to quantify the mortality lift of underwriting requirements.
• Quantify the impact of applicant behavior on overall expected mortality and mortality curve shapes.
• Utilize AI to accelerate pace of insights and maximize business impact.
• Serve as the Ethos mortality subject matter expert, advising senior leaders internally and engaging with key partners externally, translating technical work into actionable business recommendations.

Requirements

• FSA or near-FSA designation preferred; experienced ASA candidates considered.
• 5+ years of experience in life insurance actuarial roles with exposure to both mortality and underwriting models.
• Proven ability to translate third-party data, post-issue audits, and other leading indicators into expected mortality outcomes.
• Experience with assumption setting for life insurance pricing, forecasting, or valuation across a broad range of products.
• Track record of partnering with finance, product, and underwriting teams—aligning actuarial rigor with business velocity.
• Familiarity with modern data tools and pipelines (SQL, dbt, Snowflake, etc.).
• Strong statistical modeling skills in R or Python.
• Proficiency with Excel and actuarial modeling tools.
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate technical work for non-actuarial audiences.