Assistant Director, Business Architecture

Principal Financial Group • Des Moines, IA

7d • Hybrid

About The Position

As an Assistant Director of Enterprise Architecture focused on Business Architecture, you’ll help us simplify complex business challenges, translate strategy into action, and create a shared understanding of how the business delivers value and must evolve. This position is in our Benefits & Protection (B&P) business unit, which provides small to midsize business owners and their employees with solutions that help them build and protect their business and financial security. Serving as the B&P Business Architecture Lead, you’ll provide expert leadership for Business Architecture across B&P as part of the B&P Enterprise Architecture Team. You’ll partner with senior business and technology leaders, strategists, portfolio and product leaders, other Enterprise Architects, and delivery teams to connect strategy, investment, operating models, technology, and execution. You’ll also represent B&P within Principal’s broader Business Architecture community – helping connect B&P-specific perspectives with enterprise models and practices, and contributing to Principal’s overall Business Architecture maturity.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
• 10+ years of related experience in a complex, multi-business-unit organization.
• Demonstrated Business Architecture expertise, including practical application of business capabilities, value streams, information concepts, organization perspectives, strategy maps, and target-state views.
• Experience translating business strategy into architecture implications, priorities, roadmaps, and actions.
• Demonstrated experience working with and presenting to executive management and senior business and technology leaders.
• Experience leading cross-functional efforts involving business and technical disciplines.
• Strong critical thinking, analytical, conceptual, facilitation, and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to adapt architecture concepts for different audiences.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, facilitate consensus, influence without direct authority, and independently deliver high-quality results.
• Experience coaching, mentoring, or developing Business Architecture proficiency in others.
• Understanding the relationships between Business, Information and Data, Application, Technology, and Security Architecture, with deep expertise in Business Architecture.
• Experience working within Agile, product-oriented, or similar planning and delivery environments.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree.
• Business Architecture Guild Certified Business Architect (CBA) certification.
• Experience establishing or governing business-unit or enterprise reference models.
• Experience supporting portfolio planning, product discovery, operating model design, major transformation, or architecture governance.
• Knowledge of financial services, employee benefits, and/or insurance industries.
• Experience contributing to or leading an architecture community of practice.

Responsibilities

• Translate B&P strategy into business outcomes, capability priorities, value stream implications, information needs, target-state perspectives, and execution roadmaps.
• Lead Business Architecture methods, facilitation, quality, and practice development across B&P.
• Connect strategic objectives with portfolios, products, initiatives, investments, and technology roadmaps.
• Identify cross-functional dependencies, sequencing considerations, business impacts, and opportunities for modernization.
• Develop and steward reusable business perspectives, including capability maps, value streams, information concept models, organization views, gap assessments, and target-state architectures.
• Support product discovery, future-state design, operating model analysis, vendor evaluation, solution design, and major transformation initiatives.
• Bring business context and structured analysis into architecture reviews, governance forums, and strategic decisions.
• Coach and mentor B&P Enterprise Architects and other partners in the practical application of Business Architecture.
• Represent B&P in Principal’s Business Architecture community and contribute to enterprise reference models, standards, and practices.
• Build trusted relationships across Business, Product, Portfolio, Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and IT leadership.

Benefits

• 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.
• Pension Eligible
• Comprehensive, competitive benefit offerings crafted to protect their physical, financial, and social well-being.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree