Product Manager II (AI Capabilities)

Principal Financial Group; Des Moines (IA); On-site; USD 104,000 - 187,000; Full time

Job summary

Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, IA is seeking a Product Manager II to lead the strategy, governance, and ongoing evolution of AI-powered capabilities across Individual Solutions and Workplace Investing. You will own the roadmap and collaborate with business, technology, data, risk, compliance, and operations to deliver customer value.

This role sits at the intersection of product management and AI governance, including risk controls, content management, testing, and enterprise

Qualifications

• 4+ years of product management or related experience.
• Experience with AI-powered or AI-enabled products.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams including technology, risk and compliance.
• Ability to translate customer needs into actionable product requirements.

Responsibilities

• Own the vision, roadmap, and business outcomes for AI-powered capabilities.
• Define and prioritize product requirements and future investments.
• Partner with business, technology, data, risk, compliance, and operations teams to deliver customer value.
• Establish governance processes, controls, and audit evidence for AI capabilities.
• Collaborate with engineers, designers, data scientists, and stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions.
• Support agile delivery practices, backlog prioritization, story refinement, and product releases.

Skills

Product management

AI products

Roadmap planning

Stakeholder collaboration

Agile methodologies

Job description

What You'll Do

At Principal, we're building innovative digital experiences that help make financial security accessible to all. We're seeking a Product Manager II to lead the strategy, governance, and ongoing evolution of AI-powered capabilities supporting our Individual Solutions and Workplace Investing businesses.

This role sits at the intersection of product management, artificial intelligence, customer experience, risk management, and operational excellence. You will be responsible for defining and executing the product roadmap for AI-enabled solutions while ensuring appropriate controls, governance, and business outcomes are achieved.

Product Strategy & Ownership

• Own the vision, roadmap, and business outcomes for AI-powered capabilities.
• Define and prioritize product requirements, enhancements, and future investments.
• Partner with business, technology, data, risk, compliance, and operations teams to deliver customer value.
• Ensure product strategy aligns with broader business and enterprise priorities.
• Identify opportunities to improve customer experiences and operational efficiency through AI.

AI Governance & Operational Oversight

• Serve as the business owner of approved AI capabilities, customer experience, and associated risks.
• Establish and maintain operational controls, governance processes, and audit evidence.
• Oversee knowledge and content management strategies that support AI performance.
• Approve business and content changes impacting AI capabilities.
• Maintain version control and documentation for AI knowledge-base updates.
• Manage disaster recovery and business continuity plans related to AI services.

AI Quality & Performance Management

• Monitor AI performance, customer outcomes, and key business metrics.
• Analyze response quality, content gaps, hallucination indicators, drift, failed responses, and emerging customer needs.
• Leverage customer feedback and analytics to drive continuous improvement.
• Make material business decisions and prioritize corrective actions.

Testing, Risk & Vendor Management

• Coordinate pre-production, regression, boundary, negative, and red-team testing activities.
• Manage incident response, issue remediation, complaint routing, and corrective actions.
• Monitor and evaluate vendor performance and contractual obligations.
• Participate in information security incident escalation and response processes.
• Conduct periodic control effectiveness reviews and operational reporting.

Product Delivery & Collaboration

• Collaborate with engineers, designers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions.
• Translate customer and business needs into actionable product requirements.
• Support agile delivery practices, backlog prioritization, story refinement, and product releases.
• Communicate product vision, priorities, performance, and roadmap progress to stakeholders.

Who You Are

• 4+ years of product management, business, technology, or related experience.
• 2+ years working in a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment with engineering teams and stakeholders
• Experience managing products through discovery, delivery, and optimization.
• Experience defining business requirements and prioritizing product roadmaps.
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and drive decisions across multiple teams.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and strategic thinking capabilities.
• Experience working within agile environments alongside engineering teams.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Product management experience supporting AI, generative AI, machine learning, conversational AI, virtual assistants, or knowledge management platforms.
• Experience monitoring AI performance, model outcomes, and customer experience metrics.
• Understanding of AI governance, model risk management, and responsible AI frameworks.
• Experience partnering with technology, security, compliance, legal, and risk organizations.
• Experience managing third-party technology vendors.
• Financial services, insurance, workplace benefits, or wealth management industry experience.
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), knowledge bases, testing methodologies, and AI operations.

Success in This Role

In the first year, success will be measured through:

• Adoption and utilization of AI capabilities.
• Customer satisfaction and experience improvements.
• Reduction of content gaps, quality issues, and operational risk.
• Delivery of roadmap priorities and business outcomes.
• Effective governance, controls, and operational oversight.

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)

$104400 - $187200 / year

Salary Details

The following locations are examples of market-specific salary ranges across different geographies.

• Grand Island, NE / Wichita, KS: $104,400 - $140,400 / year
• Des Moines, IA / Tampa, FL: $110,200 - $148,200 / year
• Charlotte, NC / Dallas, TX: $116,000 - $156,000/ year
• Chicago, IL / Denver, CO / Minneapolis, MN: $127,600 - $171,600 / year
• Los Angeles, CA / New York City, NY: $139,200 - $187,200 / 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 Authorization/Sponsorship

At this time, we're not considering applicants that need any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. This includes, but IS NOT LIMITED TO: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J-1, etc. For additional information around work authorization needs please use the following links.

Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants

Investment Code of Ethics

For Principal Asset Management 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.

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.