Assistant Director-Engineering (Data Enablement)

Principal Financial Group•Des Moines, IA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.
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.
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.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

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.