Content Marketing Senior Strategist (Thought Leadership)

As a Content Marketing Senior Strategist (Thought Leadership), you'll play a key role in shaping conversations across the retirement and financial services landscape. This is an opportunity to combine your passion for research, storytelling, and strategy to create content that influences decision-makers, elevates our brand, and helps position Principal as a trusted leader in retirement and asset management.

If you're someone who enjoys transforming complex research and industry trends into compelling stories, this role offers a highly visible platform to do just that. As part of our Thought Leadership team, you'll partner closely with thought leadership strategists, researchers, subject matter experts, executives, and marketers across the company to develop original content that sparks conversation and delivers value to our audiences. In this role, you will: Lead the development of strategic thought leadership content that supports Principal's retirement and investment businesses. Create approximately 3-4 in-depth white papers annually, along with executive thought leadership articles, bylined content, and research-driven insights. Partner with subject matter experts and senior leaders to identify compelling industry trends, business challenges, and emerging opportunities. Conduct interviews, analyze proprietary and third-party research, review industry data, and synthesize findings into clear, differentiated perspectives. Develop content frameworks, story angles, and messaging that resonate with plan sponsors, financial professionals, TPAs, and other key audiences. Own the end-to-end content creation process, including research, writing, editing, proofreading, stakeholder reviews, and final publication. Translate complex topics into engaging, reader-friendly content that informs, inspires, and influences decision-makers. Support integrated marketing campaigns by collaborating with marketing partners to create content for activation across digital, social, email, web, and event channels. Monitor industry trends, competitor activity, market dynamics, and audience insights to identify new thought leadership opportunities. Measure and evaluate content performance, using data and insights to improve future content strategies and outcomes. Build strong relationships across the organization to align diverse perspectives and gain support for strategic content initiatives. Provide guidance and informal leadership to peers and partners on content strategy and best practices.

You are equal parts researcher, storyteller, editor, and strategist. You love diving into complex topics, identifying the most meaningful insights, and crafting content that is both credible and engaging.

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. 6+ years of experience in content strategy, thought leadership, content marketing, journalism, communications, public relations, or financial services marketing. Exceptional writing, editing, and storytelling skills. Proven ability to simplify technical or complex subject matter for a variety of audiences. Experience developing content across multiple channels, including white papers, articles, presentations, websites, email campaigns, and social media. Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret research, data, and market trends and translate them into actionable insights. Excellent project management skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines simultaneously. Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to influence and collaborate across teams. High attention to detail and commitment to producing high-quality work.

Experience within financial services, retirement, investments, insurance, asset management, or wealth management. Familiarity with institutional retirement audiences, including plan sponsors, consultants, advisors, TPAs, and investment