Assistant Director-Engineering (Data Enablement)

What You'll Do

We’re looking for an Assistant Director of Engineering to join our Retirement & Income Solutions (RIS) business, which serves participants in plan-sponsored retirement programs through income and advisory offerings. In this critical leadership role of data enablement capabilities, you’ll build and support high-performing data engineering teams, guide technical direction, and ensure the successful delivery of initiatives that strengthen customer outcomes and enable market insight.

You’ll balance strategic leadership with hands-on engagement—partnering closely with product, business, data & analytics, and technology leaders while staying connected to the realities of execution across multiple teams.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Drive priority decisions that deliver new data and AI capabilities while enabling high quality, trusted data across the full data lifecycle.
• Partner with product, business, data & analytics, and technology stakeholders to prioritize work and ensure teams stay focused on the highest value outcomes.
• Lead and support data engineers with diverse skill sets across cloud-based platforms (AWS, Snowflake, IDMC), on-premises‑ technologies (Informatica PowerCenter), and mainframe DB2 environments.
• Collaborate with delivery managers to review performance metrics and foster a continuous improvement mindset.
• Serve as a people leader by mentoring and developing teams of high-impact data engineers.
• Work effectively with leaders and teams located both stateside and offshore in a globally distributed model.
• Execute against defined strategies while also influencing broader technical and organizational direction based on insights from your teams.
• Ensure robust data pipeline delivery, high-quality trusted data, and reliable deployments across multiple teams.
• Support large, cross-team‑ initiatives requiring strong coordination, communication, and alignment.

Act as an advocate for the responsible adoption of AI tools to improve data engineering productivity and effectiveness.

Who You Are

• Bachelor’s degree (preferably in computer science, engineering, technology, or a related field) or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years of enterprise level technical experience demonstrating‑ increasing responsibility and impact.
• Be comfortable with flexible call times with our global staffing model.

Leadership Experience:

• More than 2 years formally leading engineering teams of at least 15 team members
• Guiding engineering teams through complex technical and business challenges.
• Designing and delivering resilient, scalable solutions in large environments.
• Building alignment and consensus among diverse stakeholders.
• Navigating enterprise-level‑ partnerships and dependencies.

Leadership Qualities:

• Strategic, forward-thinking‑ mindset with a bias toward action.
• Strength in operating in dynamic, evolving environments.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non‑technical audiences.

Skills That Help You Stand Out

• 4+ years of technology leadership experience managing and mentoring direct reports.
• Financial services industry experience.
• Strong use of data and metrics to identify issues, measure progress, and guide decisions.
• Solution architecture experience partnering closely with business leaders.
• Solid background in Agile practices and tools such as Jira.
• Experience with AWS, Snowflake, IDMC, and DB2, along with strong data modeling skills and expertise in shaping data product roadmaps, semantic layers, and scalable data solutions for analytics and consumption.

Salary Range Information

Salary ranges below reflect targeted base salaries. Non-sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation for all roles will be based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Salary Range (Non-Exempt expressed as hourly; Exempt expressed as yearly)

$141000 - $170000 / year

Time Off Program

Flexible Time Off (FTO) is provided to salaried (exempt) employees and provides the opportunity to take time away from the office with pay for vacation, personal or short-term illness. Employees don’t accrue a bank of time off under FTO and there is no set number of days provided.

Pension Eligible

Yes

Work Environment

This role offers in-office, hybrid (blending at least three office days in a typical workweek), and remote work arrangements (only if residing more than 30 miles from Des Moines, IA, Raleigh, NC, or Charlotte, NC). You’ll work with your leader to figure out which option may align best based on several factors.

Work Authorization/Sponsorship

At this time, we're not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future or those needing work authorization for this role. (This includes, but is not limited to students on F1-OPT, F1-CPT, J-1, etc.)

Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants

Investment Code of Ethics

For Principal Global Investors positions, you’ll need to follow an Investment Code of Ethics related to personal and business conduct as well as personal trading activities for you and members of your household. These same requirements may also apply to other positions across the organization.

Experience Principal

At Principal, we value connecting on both a personal and professional level. Together, we’re imagining a more purpose-led future for financial services – and that starts with you. Our success depends on the unique experiences, backgrounds, and talents of our employees. And we support our employees the same way we support our customers: with comprehensive, competitive benefit offerings crafted to protect their physical, financial, and social well-being. Check out our careers site to learn more about our purpose, values and benefits.

Principal is an Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Posting Window

We will accept applications for 3 full days following the Original Posting Date, after which the posting may remain open or be removed based upon applications received. If we choose to post the job again, we will accept additional applications for at least 1 full day following the Most Recently Posted Date. Please submit applications in a timely manner as there is no guarantee the posting will be available beyond the applicable deadline.

Original Posting Date

5/22/2026

Most Recently Posted Date

5/22/2026

Principal uses artificial intelligence tools to assist in reviewing and evaluating job applications, fraud prevention, and candidate matching and comparisons. These AI tools support our human recruiters in the initial review process but do not make final hiring decisions without human involvement. By submitting your application, you acknowledge this use of AI in our recruitment process. Please review our Workforce (U.S.) Privacy Notice for more details on our practices and your data privacy rights.

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