Freelance Surface Pattern Design Jobs in Iowa (NOW HIRING)

What You'll Do

We're looking for an Application Domain Lead to shape how software is designed and delivered across the enterprise.  This role may be filled at the Director or Assistant Director level, depending on experience. This senior individual contributor role sits within Enterprise Architecture and connects architecture direction with practical engineering execution. You will define reusable patterns, standards, and guidance that help teams make consistent technical decisions, embed non-functional requirements early, and build secure, reliable systems without unnecessary friction. 

You Might Be Who We're LookingForIf... 

• You’re the person on your current team who sees the same architectural mistakes repeated across squads and wants to solve them once, at the pattern level. You’ve spent years designing and building distributed systems, and you’ve seen good teams make avoidable decisions when they did not have clear, practical guidance. 

• You stay close to the work. You can evaluate trade-offs at the whiteboard and in a pull request, and you’ve built reference architectures or pattern guidance that teams adopted. You’re comfortable engaging in detailed architecture discussions and helping teams identify the patterns they should use. 

• You’ve operated without formal authority and earned trust through technical depth, clear thinking, and a track record of enabling rather than blocking. You know how to guide teams through competing priorities, exception requests, and concerns about standardization while helping the organization move toward consistent, practical patterns. 

• You'recomfortable working across diverse teamsand technologies,quicklylearningnewlanguages, tools,andplatformswhile championingapproachesthatbenefitthe broader organization.

Role Overview: 

• Own the enterprise application pattern library and help teams apply standards consistently across service boundaries, integration, resilience, and fault tolerance. 

• Establish practical NFR guidance, including reliability targets, SLO/SLI design, performance baselines, and observability expectations. 

• Create reference architectures, starter templates, and decision guides that make recommended choices easier to understand and apply. 

• Help teams learn and adopt AI-enabled SDLC practices, including responsible use of coding assistants, architecture decision support, testing acceleration, and secure delivery guardrails. 

• Partner with the Web Enablement team, promotingunderstanding and consistent adoption of PDS, NSK, and WSK. 

• Partnerwith platform engineering and security teams toembed secure-by-design practicesintoAPIs,servicecommunication,secret management, and delivery pipelines. 

• Guidemodernization effortsacrosscloud migration, platform consolidation,API modernization,andlegacy decomposition. 

In this role, you will focus on four outcomes: setting practical application standards, driving architecture consistency, enabling engineering teams, and building security and reliability into delivery from the start. 

Set practical application standards 

• Define andmaintainthe enterprise application pattern library, covering both functional architecture (domain decomposition, service boundaries, data ownership) and non-functional requirements (availability, latency, throughput, fault tolerance). 

• Establish NFR baselines for reliability, performance, availability, andobservability,so they are built into reusable patterns. 

• Author authoritative guidance on integration patterns, event-driven architecture, and API design that teams can adopt without ambiguity. 

Drive architecture consistency 

• Help product squads, domains, and platform teams apply patterns consistently without creating bottlenecks. 

• Use architecture reviews to reinforce good patterns, surface drift early, and coach teams toward convergence. 

• Maintain the architecture decision recordprocess,so important technical decisions are documented, reviewed, and traceable. 

Enable engineering teams 

• Create reference architectures, starter templates, and decision guides that are easy for teams to adopt. 

• Reduce ambiguity by making recommended architecture choices clear, practical, and repeatable. 

• Run enablement sessions, office hours, and working groups that help standards become part of normal engineering practice. 

Build security and reliability in from the start 

• Embed secure-by-design practices into application patterns from the beginning, not as a late-stage review activity. 

• Build reliability and observability expectations into architecture patterns through SLOs, SLIs, and measurable operating targets. 

• Partner with platform and security teamsonshared patternsforservice mesh, API gateway, secret management, and pipeline controls. 

Lead modernization through partnership 

• Represent application architecture in cloud migration, platform consolidation, API modernization, and legacy decomposition efforts. 

• Workwith product, data,security,and platformleadersto align architecture decisions with business capability roadmaps. 

• Earn trust through technical depth, clear guidance, and a bias toward helping teams move faster while improving consistency, security, and reliability. 

Who You Are

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years in a domain or enterprise architecture capacity 
• Deep command of distributed systems design, microservices patterns, and cloud-native architecture on AWS 

• Demonstrated ability to build pattern libraries and reference architectures 

• Experience embedding NFRs such as reliability, performance, and security into architecture patterns 

• Strong communicationskills: able to write architecture guidance that is precise without being prescriptive 

• Track recordof earning technical trust across engineering teams without formal authority 

Technical Requirements:

• Distributed systems design — DDD, microservices, event-driven architecture, CQRS, saga patterns, hexagonal architecture 

• Cloud-native architecture on AWS — EKS, Fargate, Lambda, Aurora, DynamoDB,EventBridge, SQS/SNS 

• NFR patterns — circuit breakers, bulkheads, retry/backoff, rate limiting, graceful degradation, SLO/SLI design 

• API design and governance — REST,gRPC, API versioning, contract-first development 

• CI/CD and observability — GitHubActions,ArgoCD,OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, structured logging 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Primary languages: Java Spring Boot, Node.js, and Python, with enough fluency to read code, review implementation choices, and evaluate architectural trade-offs without needing to be the primary engineer. 

• Emerging stacks: TypeScript (full-stack), Rust (performance-critical)  

• Security patterns: service mesh, API gateway security, secret management, SAST/DAST, policy-as-code 

• Network architecture: VPC design,PrivateLink, Transit Gateway, WAF/Shield 

• GraphQLfederation— active in parts of the portfolio 

Skills that will help you stand out:

• AI/ML integration patterns — LLM embedding, RAG architectures, model abstraction layers, agentic workflow design 

• Modernization strategy — strangler fig, anti-corruption layers, data sync for monolith decomposition 

• Data mesh — domain data ownership, data product interfaces, federated governance 

• Platform transitions —EventBridgemigration and API Gateway modernization (both in-flight) 

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)
$145000 - $190000 / year
Salary Details

The following salary ranges reflect market-specific compensation for this position across multiple job levels. Candidates will be evaluated to determine the appropriate job level based on their skills and experience. 

• AD- Enterprise Architecture: $145,000 - $170,000 / year
• Director-Enterprise Architecture: $160,000 - $190,000 / 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 Environment

This role offers in-office, hybrid (blending at least three office days in a typical workweek), and remote work arrangements (only if residing more than 30 miles from Des Moines, IA, Raleigh, NC, or Charlotte, NC). You’ll work with your leader to figure out which option may align best based on several factors.

Job Level

We’ll consider talent at the Assistant Director level and Director-Enterprise Architecture level with the right experience and skills.

Work Authorization/Sponsorship

At this time, we're not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future or those needing work authorization for this role. (This includes, but is not limited to students on F1-OPT, F1-CPT, J-1, etc.) 

Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants

Investment Code of Ethics

For Principal Global Investors 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.

Posting Window
We will accept applications for 3 full days following the Original Posting Date, after which the posting may remain open or be removed based upon applications received. If we choose to post the job again, we will accept additional applications for at least 1 full day following the Most Recently Posted Date. Please submit applications in a timely manner as there is no guarantee the posting will be available beyond the applicable deadline.
Original Posting Date
7/21/2026
Most Recently Posted Date
7/21/2026
 

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LinkedIn Remote Hashtag

#LI-Remote

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#LI-EW1Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years in a domain or enterprise architecture capacity 
• Deep command of distributed systems design, microservices patterns, and cloud-native architecture on AWS 

• Demonstrated ability to build pattern libraries and reference architectures 

• Experience embedding NFRs such as reliability, performance, and security into architecture patterns 

• Strong communicationskills: able to write architecture guidance that is precise without being prescriptive 

• Track recordof earning technical trust across engineering teams without formal authority 

Technical Requirements:

• Distributed systems design — DDD, microservices, event-driven architecture, CQRS, saga patterns, hexagonal architecture 

• Cloud-native architecture on AWS — EKS, Fargate, Lambda, Aurora, DynamoDB,EventBridge, SQS/SNS 

• NFR patterns — circuit breakers, bulkheads, retry/backoff, rate limiting, graceful degradation, SLO/SLI design 

• API design and governance — REST,gRPC, API versioning, contract-first development 

• CI/CD and observability — GitHubActions,ArgoCD,OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, structured logging 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Primary languages: Java Spring Boot, Node.js, and Python, with enough fluency to read code, revi...