AVP, Business Technology Leader

Principal Financial Group • Des Moines, IA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

We’re looking for a Head of Technology to join our Individual Solutions team. As Head of Technology for Individual Solutions, you will shape this business from an early stage and be an architect of Principal’s direct B2C, tech-forward competitive advantage. You will build an innovative wealth management technology platform, a top talent engineering organization, and a nimble, fast paced delivery capability that brings WPI to life. This is not an attempt to recreate what the wealth industry has already built. You will study what others have learned, challenge those assumptions, and help Principal and Individual Solutions think differently. It is an uncommon combination: the builder mandate of a new venture with the assets of a Fortune-scale enterprise behind it.
Your accountability is end-to-end. You will lead the Individual Solutions technology organization directly and work across Principal’s federated technology ecosystem to integrate the architecture, platforms, data, security, and shared services the organization and clients depend on. Success is measured by whether the technology works as a coherent system, enhancing client and business outcomes, not by where individual teams happen to report. This is demanding, pioneering work inside a large, matrixed enterprise. Join with eyes open, energized by exactly that challenge.
You will operate within a dual reporting structure, reporting to the Individual Solutions business leader and the Retirement & Income Solutions CIO. The role also carries formal accountability to Principal Financial Group’s senior technology leadership for architecture, security, and engineering standards, this includes:
Delivery speed, quality, reliability, and technology economics that improve as the business scales.
Individual Solutions technology operates as one coherent system across Principal's retirement, wealth, asset management, data, security, and shared platforms.
Differentiated customer experiences created through software, data, AI, and advisor augmented delivery.
A high-performing engineering organization with strong technical leadership and ready successors.
Modern, secure, resilient technology that supports WPI from launch through scale.
Fluency at all levels of the organization from engineers and technical execution to strategy and executive stakeholders
A clear technology strategy and executable roadmap aligned to WPI business priorities.
This role exists to produce six outcomes:
Set the technology strategy. Translate Individual Solutions business and product priorities into a clear strategy and an executable roadmap. Own Individual Solutions target and solution architecture within Principal’s enterprise, security, and risk guardrails. Design for scalability, resilience, security, privacy, regulatory requirements, and cost. Make deliberate tradeoffs among speed, architecture, technical debt, and future optionality, and own the outcomes.
Lead engineering. Build an organization capable of creating and operating modern customer-facing financial technology. Set a high bar across resilience, speed, design, code quality, testing, automation, DevSecOps, observability, and developer effectiveness. Stay technically fluent and engaged: challenge architecture, pressure-test estimates, and help teams through hard problems. The role demands genuine technical depth.
Own delivery across a federated enterprise. Own the end-to-end Individual Solutions delivery outcome across Individual Solutions teams, contributing to Principal's organizations, shared platforms, and external partners. Back commitments with credible technical estimates and explicit capacity from critical contributing teams. Surface dependencies early and drive firm commitments on capacity, timing, and architecture. Drive clarity in priorities, decision rights, and tradeoffs across contributing teams. WPI's success depends as much on disciplined execution as technical excellence. Enterprise complexity is something you navigate. It is not an excuse.
Own production. Create a culture in which teams own what they build through production. Set Individual Solutions-wide expectations for availability, performance, observability, resilience, incident response, and recovery. You hold clear authority over production readiness when material engineering, security, or reliability risks remain open. Build it. Ship it. Own it. Be obsessed with improved client and organizational outcomes with a startup mentality.
Build the data and AI capability. Build the data foundation Individual Solutions needs, drawing on Principal enterprise platforms where they provide scale and reuse. Move the right AI opportunities from experimentation into secure, governed production use, spanning personalization, intelligent planning and education, recommendations and next-best-action, agentic and conversational experiences, and advisor and workflow automation. Decide where AI should and should not replace human judgment. Use AI to improve how Individual Solutions builds solutions, and measure value in engineering capability and quality, not tool adoption.
Shape the technology organization. Establish senior technical leadership across engineering, architecture, data and AI, delivery, and production. Attract and develop outstanding engineers and leaders and build successors. A successful organization depends less on individual heroes over time, not more. Shape the technology investment with Individual Solutions Business and Finance leadership. Build transparency into cost to build, cost to operate, and cost to serve. Make strong build, buy, and partner decisions. Partners extend IS capability, but do not create long-term dependencies.
Operating at the intersection of financial services and technology, Principal builds financial tools that help our customers live better lives. We take pride in being a purpose-led firm, motivated by our mission to make financial security accessible to all. Our mission, integrity, and customer focus have made us a trusted leader for more than 140 years.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field and 15+ years of experience in technology leadership (with more than 8 of those years spent leading leaders), software engineering, architecture, technology delivery or equivalent work experience.
• Significant progressive experience in software engineering, platform engineering, or architecture.
• A real technical foundation built by personally designing, building, or shaping significant software or platforms.
• Executive experience leading meaningful engineering organizations and senior technical leaders.
• Adept at delivering technology in a regulated or similarly complex operating environment.
• Experience building or operating highly available, customer-critical technology across multiple teams and organizational boundaries.
• Strong judgment balancing customer value, speed, security, reliability, cost, and long-term sustainability.

Nice To Haves

• Built or significantly scaled a new consumer-facing digital platform or business, including consumer-scale mobile and web.
• Production AI experience with LLM-enabled applications, agentic systems, and AI-enabled customer experiences, including orchestration, retrieval architectures, model evaluation, and responsible AI governance.
• Wealth management, retirement, RIA or broker-dealer, advisor technology, or banking experience.
• Significant data platform and data engineering depth.
• Global engineering leadership across internal teams, shared resources, and strategic partners.

Responsibilities

• Set the technology strategy. Translate Individual Solutions business and product priorities into a clear strategy and an executable roadmap. Own Individual Solutions target and solution architecture within Principal’s enterprise, security, and risk guardrails. Design for scalability, resilience, security, privacy, regulatory requirements, and cost. Make deliberate tradeoffs among speed, architecture, technical debt, and future optionality, and own the outcomes.
• Lead engineering. Build an organization capable of creating and operating modern customer-facing financial technology. Set a high bar across resilience, speed, design, code quality, testing, automation, DevSecOps, observability, and developer effectiveness. Stay technically fluent and engaged: challenge architecture, pressure-test estimates, and help teams through hard problems. The role demands genuine technical depth.
• Own delivery across a federated enterprise. Own the end-to-end Individual Solutions delivery outcome across Individual Solutions teams, contributing to Principal's organizations, shared platforms, and external partners. Back commitments with credible technical estimates and explicit capacity from critical contributing teams. Surface dependencies early and drive firm commitments on capacity, timing, and architecture. Drive clarity in priorities, decision rights, and tradeoffs across contributing teams. WPI's success depends as much on disciplined execution as technical excellence. Enterprise complexity is something you navigate. It is not an excuse.
• Own production. Create a culture in which teams own what they build through production. Set Individual Solutions-wide expectations for availability, performance, observability, resilience, incident response, and recovery. You hold clear authority over production readiness when material engineering, security, or reliability risks remain open. Build it. Ship it. Own it. Be obsessed with improved client and organizational outcomes with a startup mentality.
• Build the data and AI capability. Build the data foundation Individual Solutions needs, drawing on Principal enterprise platforms where they provide scale and reuse. Move the right AI opportunities from experimentation into secure, governed production use, spanning personalization, intelligent planning and education, recommendations and next-best-action, agentic and conversational experiences, and advisor and workflow automation. Decide where AI should and should not replace human judgment. Use AI to improve how Individual Solutions builds solutions, and measure value in engineering capability and quality, not tool adoption.
• Shape the technology organization. Establish senior technical leadership across engineering, architecture, data and AI, delivery, and production. Attract and develop outstanding engineers and leaders and build successors. A successful organization depends less on individual heroes over time, not more. Shape the technology investment with Individual Solutions Business and Finance leadership. Build transparency into cost to build, cost to operate, and cost to serve. Make strong build, buy, and partner decisions. Partners extend IS capability, but do not create long-term dependencies.

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: Executive