How to Apply to Principal Financial Group

5 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 180 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Apply through careers.principal.com or directly via iCIMS at careers-principal.icims.com.
  • Mirror requisition keywords exactly, iCIMS ranks candidates on keyword overlap.
  • Lead with industry credentials: FSA/ASA, CFA, CFP, FINRA series, CPA.
  • Expect 5-7 steps: recruiter, hiring manager, panel, final, offer.
  • Be honest about Des Moines relocation or hybrid commute up front.
  • Know the Houston-to-Strable CEO transition and what Strable's actuarial background signals.
  • Treat Principal as a destination employer, not a backup to Northwestern Mutual or Lincoln Financial.
  • For Principal International, language fluency and regional market knowledge are real differentiators.
  • Quantify everything in dollars, participants, AUM, premiums, or claims volume.

About Principal Financial Group

Principal Financial Group (Nasdaq: PFG) is a Des Moines, Iowa-headquartered global financial services firm spanning retirement plan services, asset management, and U.S. life and disability insurance, with roughly 19,000 employees worldwide and approximately $700 billion in assets under management. The company traces its founding to July 1, 1879, when Edward Temple, Simon Casady, and Phineas M. Casady chartered The Bankers Life Association in Des Moines to provide affordable life insurance to bankers and their employees. That mutual-society DNA, born during the agrarian economy of post-Civil War Iowa, still shapes the institution: a conservative balance sheet, long-tenure employee culture, and a Midwestern operating cadence that feels closer to a regional bank than to a Manhattan asset manager. The firm spent more than a century as a mutual insurer (rebranded along the way as Bankers Life Company and then Principal Mutual Life Insurance Company) before its July 1, 1998 demutualization into a mutual insurance holding structure and its October 26, 2001 IPO at $18.50 per share, which created Principal Financial Group as the public company it is today. Principal now operates through three primary segments: Principal Asset Management (the public-markets and private-markets investment business, rebranded in 2022 from Principal Global Investors to unify the firm's investment platform under one name); Principal U.S. Insurance Solutions (employee benefits, group life and disability, individual life, and non-medical health products sold primarily through workplaces and the financial-professional channel); and Principal International, which runs joint ventures and majority-owned operations in Brazil (the Brasilprev pension JV with Banco do Brasil, one of the largest pension franchises in Latin America), Mexico, Chile, Hong Kong, and a long-standing JV in mainland China, with additional servicing hubs in Southeast Asia. Cutting across all three is the retirement plan services business, the company's flagship and the primary reason most U.S. workers encounter Principal at all: it is one of the largest 401(k), defined-benefit, and ESOP recordkeepers in the country, with roughly $700 billion in retirement assets administered. After nearly a decade under CEO Dan Houston, Principal completed a planned succession on January 7, 2025, when Deanna Strable, an actuary who joined the firm in 1990 and served as CFO from 2017 to 2024 and then COO, became President and CEO. Houston transitioned to Executive Chair before Strable also assumed the Chair role on September 2, 2025, leaving her with both the CEO and Chair seats and positioning Principal for an internally-developed, continuity-driven next chapter.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Search openings at careers

    Search openings at careers.principal.com (the public-facing careers site) or directly on the iCIMS portal at careers-principal.icims.com. Filter by function (Investment Management, Actuarial, Engineering & Technology, Sales, Customer Care, Finance & Accounting, Account & Relationship Management) and location (Des Moines is the largest hub, with smaller offices in Charlotte, NYC, Boston, and international locations).

  2. 2
    Create an iCIMS candidate profile and upload a tailored resume

    Create an iCIMS candidate profile and upload a tailored resume. Principal's iCIMS instance lets you import from LinkedIn, but a clean PDF that mirrors the requisition's keyword set materially improves recruiter screen rates given iCIMS' keyword-weighted candidate ranking.

  3. 3
    Initial recruiter screen, typically 30 minutes by phone or Microsoft Teams

    Initial recruiter screen, typically 30 minutes by phone or Microsoft Teams. Expect questions on motivation for Principal specifically (versus Northwestern Mutual, Lincoln Financial, Voya, or Nationwide), comp expectations, and willingness to relocate to or work hybrid from Des Moines for headquarters roles.

  4. 4
    Hiring manager conversation, usually 45-60 minutes, focused on role-specific sco

    Hiring manager conversation, usually 45-60 minutes, focused on role-specific scope, technical depth (actuarial models, investment process, retirement plan operations, claims systems, etc.), and how you would fit the team's day-to-day work.

  5. 5
    Panel or loop interview with 3-5 team members and adjacent stakeholders

    Panel or loop interview with 3-5 team members and adjacent stakeholders. Behavioral STAR questions dominate; for actuarial, asset management, and engineering roles expect a technical case, modeling exercise, or live coding/whiteboarding component.

  6. 6
    Final interview with the segment leader or department head, often combined with

    Final interview with the segment leader or department head, often combined with a culture conversation focused on long-tenure fit and Des Moines / hybrid-work realities.

  7. 7
    Verbal offer from the recruiter, followed by written offer through iCIMS

    Verbal offer from the recruiter, followed by written offer through iCIMS. Background check, drug screen (still standard at Principal as a regulated financial institution), and FINRA disclosures for licensed roles. Onboarding paperwork is delivered through the iCIMS new-hire portal.

Resume Tips for Principal Financial Group

recommended

Lead with insurance, retirement, or asset management industry experience by name

Lead with insurance, retirement, or asset management industry experience by name. Principal recruiters screen first for domain familiarity (recordkeeping, ERISA, group benefits, life and DI underwriting, fixed income, alternatives) before transferable skills.

recommended

For actuarial roles, surface FSA, ASA, ACAS, or FCAS credentials and exam progre

For actuarial roles, surface FSA, ASA, ACAS, or FCAS credentials and exam progress at the top of the resume. Principal is a heavy actuarial employer (the current CEO is an actuary) and exam status is a hard screen.

recommended

For Principal Asset Management roles, lead with CFA charter or progress, MBA, AU

For Principal Asset Management roles, lead with CFA charter or progress, MBA, AUM/strategy worked on, and asset class specialization. Principal AM competes with BlackRock, Nuveen, and PIMCO for fixed-income and real-estate talent and screens against that bar.

recommended

For advisor-channel and financial professional support roles, surface CFP, ChFC,

For advisor-channel and financial professional support roles, surface CFP, ChFC, CLU, CRPC, FINRA Series 6/7/63/65/66, and state insurance licenses. Principal sells primarily through the independent financial professional channel and licensure shortens onboarding by months.

recommended

Mirror the iCIMS requisition language verbatim in your skills and experience sec

Mirror the iCIMS requisition language verbatim in your skills and experience sections. iCIMS ranks candidates with a keyword-weighting algorithm and recruiters often filter on exact-match terms before reading.

recommended

Quantify impact in dollars, plan participants, AUM, premiums, claims volume, or

Quantify impact in dollars, plan participants, AUM, premiums, claims volume, or retirement assets administered. Principal is a metrics-driven firm and unquantified bullets read as junior.

recommended

Address Des Moines relocation directly in the cover letter or summary if you are

Address Des Moines relocation directly in the cover letter or summary if you are not currently in Iowa. Principal hires nationally but most HQ roles are hybrid-in-Des-Moines; ambiguity here causes recruiters to deprioritize candidates.

recommended

If you have a CPA, FRM, PMP, AWS/Azure cloud cert, or similar credential relevan

If you have a CPA, FRM, PMP, AWS/Azure cloud cert, or similar credential relevant to the role, list it explicitly. Principal pays credential premiums and recruiters log them as differentiators.

ATS System: iCIMS

iCIMS is one of the largest enterprise applicant tracking systems in the U.S., powering recruiting for thousands of mid-to-large employers including Principal Financial Group at careers-principal.icims.com. iCIMS uses keyword-weighted candidate ranking, structured requisition templates, and a unified candidate profile that follows you across all applications to the same employer. Recruiters can filter and sort applicants on exact-match keywords from the job description, so resume optimization against the specific requisition matters more than at platforms with stronger semantic parsing.

  • Mirror the job description's exact phrasing in your skills and experience sections, iCIMS ranks on literal keyword overlap rather than semantic similarity.
  • Upload a clean PDF resume rather than relying on LinkedIn import, which often loses formatting and credential ordering.
  • Complete every optional profile field including work authorization, certifications, and licensure, recruiters filter on these.
  • Use a single consistent iCIMS profile per employer, applying to multiple roles from the same profile so recruiters see your full intent.
  • Watch your iCIMS application status page for movement, status changes there are usually faster than email notifications.

Complete iCIMS Resume Guide →

Interview Culture

Principal interviews carry an unmistakably Midwestern, Des Moines-headquartered character: more buttoned-up than a New York asset manager, less performative than a coastal tech firm, and more deliberate than the average insurance carrier. Interviewers are friendly and direct, but they are also evaluating whether you would still be at Principal in ten years. Long tenure is genuinely valued, and the firm's conservative balance sheet, mutual-heritage culture, and Iowa operating base mean that 'I'm just here for two years before I move on' lands poorly even if no one says so. Behavioral STAR questions dominate across functions, with a strong emphasis on collaboration, judgment under ambiguity, and how you handle conflict with peers and stakeholders. For actuarial, investment, and engineering roles you should also expect a technical component, ranging from a take-home modeling exercise to a live whiteboard problem on pricing, valuation, portfolio construction, or systems design. Principal Asset Management interviews skew closer to a traditional buy-side loop with investment-thesis questions and asset-class deep dives, while retirement plan services and U.S. Insurance Solutions interviews skew toward operational depth, regulatory knowledge (ERISA, state insurance regulation, FINRA), and client/plan-sponsor empathy. Be ready to discuss why Principal specifically rather than Northwestern Mutual, Lincoln Financial, Voya, Nationwide, or one of the large coastal asset managers; recruiters and hiring managers are sensitive to candidates who treat Principal as a backup. The Houston-to-Strable CEO transition in January 2025 is a live topic worth understanding before you walk in: Strable's elevation from CFO to COO to CEO reflects Principal's strong preference for internally-developed leaders, and her actuarial background reinforces the firm's identity as a disciplined, long-horizon operator. Finally, expect honest conversations about Des Moines itself. Recruiters will pitch the lifestyle (low cost of living, short commutes, family-friendly, four real seasons, a genuinely walkable downtown anchored by the Principal building) but they will also be candid that it is a small market with a smaller financial services peer set than Boston or New York. Candidates who lean into that fit do well; candidates who treat Des Moines as a compromise tend not to get offers.

What Principal Financial Group Looks For

  • Genuine interest in retirement, insurance, or asset management as a long-term career, not as a stepping stone to a coastal hedge fund or fintech startup.
  • Domain credentials that match the role: FSA/ASA for actuarial, CFA for investments, CFP/ChFC for advisor-facing, FINRA series for licensed sales, CPA for finance and accounting.
  • Comfort with a Midwestern, hybrid-in-Des-Moines operating model and willingness to be in the office on the team's anchor days.
  • Quantitative rigor and comfort with regulated environments (ERISA, state insurance, FINRA, SEC, banking regulators in international JVs).
  • Collaborative, low-ego working style. Principal is a long-tenure culture and hiring managers screen out high-performers who burn relationships.
  • Evidence of long-horizon thinking. The firm has survived 145+ years by being conservative; candidates who optimize for short-term wins struggle in the loop.
  • For Principal International roles, language fluency (Portuguese for Brazil, Spanish for Mexico/Chile, Mandarin/Cantonese for China/HK) and on-the-ground market knowledge.
  • For Principal Asset Management roles, a credible investment thesis, asset class specialization, and the ability to articulate process under pressure.

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

Principal Financial Group currently has 180 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 180 open positions at Principal Financial Group

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