Pursue your calling and make an impact

We know it’s important to get off to a great start with your career. Principal offers multiple opportunities to gain experience, make connections, and provide fast-tracked opportunities to learn our business from the inside out.

You’re not just looking for an internship

We hear you. That’s why working with us isn’t just about skill sets and job responsibilities. We care about offering you diverse experiences, rewarding challenges, and global opportunities that push you to reach for bigger life goals.

The Internship Experience

You will meet with senior executives, gain career direction, and contribute to work that helps our customers live their best lives - all at a Fortune 500 company who invests in your personal and professional development.

Did we mention you’ll have plenty of time to explore Des Moines?

Principal is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, the Midwest’s best-kept secret. From its miles of trails and lakes, local wineries and breweries, to world-class music, theater and a thriving foodie scene, Des Moines offers big-city perks with small-town charm.

Worried about relocating to Des Moines? Don't worry, we offer travel assistance and a living stipend to those who are eligible.

What you'll do:

In this role, you are required to use quantitative methods, GIS, advanced mathematical models, operations research techniques, simulation and strong business acumen to deliver insight, recommendations and solutions for Principal and related businesses. You are required to formulate and apply mathematical modeling and other optimizing methods to develop and interpret information that assists management with decision making, policy formulation or other managerial functions. 

You’ll play a crucial role in leading world class financial solutions, logistics and distribution capacity planning and diagnostics, network design, flow modeling and operations research on regional and global levels. You’ll help drive decisions that optimize total cost, lead time on strategic and tactical, and more opportunistic levels. You will present compelling, validated stories to all levels of organization, including peers, senior management and internal customers to drive both strategic and operational changes in business.

Accountabilities:

• Serve as consulting resource for quantitative sciences, experimental design and data analysis methodologies for target Principal business units.
• Prepare and conduct training to Principal community on relevant topics of statistics and data science.
• Maintain expertise in the proper application and use of quantitative tools for the management of Principal business unit objectives.
• Serve as “power user” subject matter expert for the ongoing development and optimization of at least one critical quantitative science objective used by Principal.
• Communicate opportunities for improvement of quantitative science applications to the development or maintenance teams, based on personal use or user feedback.

Qualifications:

We’re looking for someone with:

• Current enrollment or has a BS, MS or PhD in a recognized Quantitative science field, GIS, Operations Research, all Engineering disciplines, Quantitative social science field or Mathematics or a related field 
• Minimum 3.0 Cumulative GPA
• Analytical thinking skills
• Strong influencing skills to lead alignment and adoption on process and methods
• Good communication skills
• People skills that will build bridges
• Drive for translating business problems into research initiatives that deliver business value
• Creativity in defining challenging exploratory projects and developing solutions

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience with statistics, applied mathematics, operations research, and simulation is highly desired
• Expertise in probability theory, Bayesian statistics, textual analytics, queuing theory, game theory is desirable
• A good understanding of algorithms and computational complexity is desirable

Additional Information:

Work Authorization/Sponsorship

Visa sponsorship available.

Principal is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to of age, race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, national origin, citizenship status, disability, genetic characteristics, sexual orientation, marital status, domestic partner status, military status, protected veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Investment Code of Ethics

For positions with Principal Global Investors, you will be required to follow a Code of Ethics which covers a number of obligations 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.