Principal, Software Engineering

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust a Fortune 500 company is a globally recognized award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the worlds most successful individuals families and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service expertise and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22000 partners we serve the worlds most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Role Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to provide technical leadership and handson execution across complex cloudnative software initiatives. This role combines deep engineering expertise with mentorship architecture influence and strong collaboration across global teams. The ideal candidate is passionate about engineering excellence AIassisted development and building highquality scalable products using modern development practices.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership & HandsOn Development

• Act as a handson technical leader designing developing and reviewing highquality productionready software.
• Lead development using Java as the primary language following clean code TDD and specdriven development principles.
• Drive adoption of AIassisted development capabilities (e.g. Copilotstyle tools intelligent automation) to improve developer productivity and code quality.
• Influence and review application and solution architecture for scalability security performance and maintainability.
• Partner with architects and senior engineers to define and enforce engineering standards and best practices.

Cloud & Platform Engineering

• Design build and deploy applications on Microsoft Azure leveraging cloudnative services.
• Contribute to cloud architecture decisions with a strong understanding of:
  • Azure compute networking storage and security
  • Cloudbased databases (SQL & NoSQL) and performance considerations
• Support and continuously improve DevOps pipelines CI/CD practices and infrastructure automation.
• Enable resilient observable and costefficient systems in the cloud.

Quality DevOps & Automation

• Champion TestDriven Development (TDD) and automated testing at all levels (unit integration system).
• Enable and evolve test automation frameworks and practices across teams.
• Closely collaborate with DevOps and SRE partners to:
  • Improve release reliability and deployment frequency
  • Reduce operational risk and technical debt
  • Strengthen monitoring alerting and production readiness

Engineering Excellence & Team Enablement

• Mentor and groom engineers to elevate technical skills design thinking and ownership mindset.
• Provide guidance through code reviews design discussions and technical deep dives.
• Foster a culture of high engineering standards accountability and continuous improvement.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to product QA and platform teams.

Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with crossfunctional stakeholders including Product Architecture QA and Operations.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Collaborate effectively with globally distributed teams across North America EMEA and India accommodating timezone overlaps when required.
• Proactively identify risks and propose pragmatic solutions.

Required Qualifications

Technical Skills

• 10 years of professional software engineering experience with a strong handson track record.
• Deep expertise in Java and modern application frameworks.
• Strong experience with Azure cloud services and cloudnative application development.
• Solid understanding and practical application of:
  • TestDriven Development (TDD)
  • Specdriven / contractfirst development
  • CI/CD and DevOps practices
• Working knowledge of cloud databases data modeling and performance tuning.

Professional Skills

• Proven ability to lead by influence rather than authority.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong problemsolving design and decisionmaking abilities.
• Comfortable operating in fastpaced evolving environments.

Preferred / Added Weightage

• Microsoft Azure Architect Certification (strongly preferred).
• Experience integrating or enabling AIassisted engineering tools within development workflows.
• Exposure to largescale modernization cloud migration or distributed systems.
• Experience working in regulated or enterprisegrade environments.

What Success Looks Like in This Role

• Engineering teams consistently deliver highquality secure and scalable products.
• Robust DevOps and automation practices reduce friction and improve timetomarket.
• Engineers grow in capability confidence and ownership.
• Architecture decisions balance innovation stability and longterm maintainability.
• Global collaboration is effective respectful and outcomedriven.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future. Northern Trust will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work visa status for this opportunity (no sponsorship is available for H-1B L-1 TN O-1 E-3 H-1B1 F-1 J-1 OPT CPT or any other employment-based visa)

Salary Range:

Salary range is a good faith estimate of base pay. Northern Trust provides a comprehensive benefits package including retirement benefits (401k and pension) health and welfare benefits (medical dental vision spending accounts and disability) paid time off parental and caregiver leave life & accident insurance and other voluntary and well-being benefits. Northern Trust also provides a discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component.

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged senior leaders are accessible and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve!Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

Wed love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the worlds most admired and sustainable companies! Build your career with us andapply today.#MadeForGreater

Reasonable accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process please email our HR Service Center at .

We hope youre excited about the role and the opportunity to work with us. We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people.

Apply today and talk to us about your flexible working requirements and together we can achieve greater.