Sr. Lead, Software Engineering

About Northern Trust

As a global leader in innovative wealth management asset servicing asset management and banking services Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) is proud to guide the worlds most successful individuals families corporations and institutions.

Since 1889 we have aligned our efforts with our three guiding Principles That Endure: Service Expertise and Integrity. Together they reflect the three cornerstones of business conduct which we strive to instill in our employees whom we call partners and to provide to our clients and the communities we serve worldwide.

With more than 135 years of financial experience and over 24000 partners we serve the worlds most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

The Senior Lead Software Engineer is responsible for providing hands-on technical leadership across the design development modernization and delivery of digital solutions supporting the Client Onboarding & Enrollments portfolio.

This role combines deep software engineering expertise with architecture influence cloud engineering DevOps AI-assisted development and team enablement. The Senior Lead partners closely with Product Architecture Engineering QA SRE and business stakeholders to deliver secure scalable resilient and high-performing digital products.

The role serves as a senior technical leader across engineering teams driving engineering standards mentoring engineers addressing complex technical challenges and ensuring solutions align with enterprise architecture security risk and governance requirements.

• Lead the design development implementation and modernization of complex enterprise digital solutions.
• Remain hands-on with Java/JEE Spring Boot REST APIs microservices event-driven architectures and modern web applications.
• Provide technical direction across multiple applications components and engineering teams.
• Lead technical design and architecture reviews to ensure scalability security performance resiliency and maintainability.
• Establish and promote clean-code practices reusable engineering patterns Test-Driven Development (TDD) and spec-driven/contract-first development.
• Perform and guide code reviews technical deep dives proof-of-concepts and resolution of complex engineering challenges.
• Partner with architects and senior engineers to define and continuously improve engineering standards and reference patterns.

• Design and deliver cloud-native solutions leveraging Microsoft Azure and modern engineering practices.
• Provide technical leadership across Azure compute networking storage integration security and cloud database capabilities.
• Drive modernization of legacy applications and services toward scalable API-first event-driven and cloud-native architectures.
• Ensure solutions are designed for availability observability scalability performance resiliency and operational supportability.
• Provide technical guidance for data architecture integration patterns Oracle/SQL Elasticsearch MQ/Solace and related enterprise technologies.

• Champion Agile DevOps CI/CD automated testing and infrastructure automation practices.
• Drive Test-Driven Development and comprehensive automation across unit integration regression and system testing.
• Strengthen CI/CD pipelines and release practices to improve deployment reliability quality and delivery velocity.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to improve monitoring logging alerting dashboarding incident response and production readiness.
• Identify recurring operational issues and drive engineering improvements that reduce technical debt and improve application stability.

• Champion responsible adoption of AI-assisted software engineering tools and practices to improve developer productivity quality and engineering effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate AI-assisted development intelligent automation code generation testing documentation and engineering productivity capabilities into development workflows.
• Establish effective engineering practices that combine AI-assisted development with appropriate code review testing security and governance controls.

• Mentor and develop engineers across design coding testing cloud engineering DevOps and production support disciplines.
• Provide technical guidance to Lead and Senior Software Engineers while promoting strong engineering ownership and accountability.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence continuous learning innovation and continuous improvement.
• Lead by influence across engineering teams and help drive alignment on technology decisions standards and strategic technical priorities.
• Promote reusable engineering capabilities and patterns that improve consistency and accelerate delivery across the portfolio.

• Monitor application and platform health and lead resolution of complex stability performance scalability and resiliency issues.
• Identify assess and mitigate technology operational security and engineering risks.
• Ensure appropriate controls are incorporated into application design development deployment and operational processes.
• Proactively address vulnerabilities technical debt and production risks to maintain application reliability and resilience.
• Ensure solutions comply with organizational architecture standards security policies technology controls regulatory expectations and governance requirements.

• Partner closely with Product Business Architecture QA SRE Security Infrastructure and other technology teams.
• Translate business requirements and strategic priorities into scalable technical solutions and engineering roadmaps.
• Communicate complex technology decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Influence technology direction and engineering priorities through technical expertise and data-driven recommendations.
• Collaborate effectively with globally distributed teams across North America EMEA and India.
• Proactively identify dependencies constraints technology risks and opportunities while recommending pragmatic solutions.

• 8 years of professional software engineering experience with significant hands-on development and technical leadership experience.
• Deep expertise in Java/JEE Spring Boot REST APIs microservices and enterprise application development.
• Strong experience designing and developing cloud-native solutions on Microsoft Azure.
• Strong experience with Oracle SQL Elasticsearch MQ/Solace and enterprise integration technologies.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems API design event-driven architecture data modeling and application performance optimization.
• Strong experience with CI/CD DevOps automated testing and modern software delivery practices.
• Practical experience with Test-Driven Development (TDD) and spec-driven/contract-first development.
• Experience with Linux networking cloud infrastructure monitoring observability and application security.
• Understanding of application architecture cloud architecture security scalability availability and resiliency principles.

• Proven ability to provide hands-on technical leadership across complex engineering initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and elevate engineering practices across teams.
• Ability to lead and influence technology decisions without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Strong analytical troubleshooting design and problem-solving capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to communicate architecture and engineering decisions clearly to both technical and business stakeholders.
• Comfortable operating in complex fast-paced globally distributed enterprise environments.

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related technical field.
• 8 years of software engineering experience including experience leading complex application development initiatives.
• Experience working within Agile product and engineering organizations.
• Experience delivering enterprise-grade systems in regulated environments.
• Experience with digital products workflow automation transaction processing client onboarding or financial services platforms is preferred.

• Microsoft Azure certification particularly Azure architecture or development certifications.
• Experience with AI-assisted software development and engineering productivity tools.
• Experience with large-scale application modernization and cloud migration.
• Experience designing highly available distributed and event-driven systems.
• Experience establishing reusable engineering patterns frameworks or platform capabilities across multiple teams.
• Experience operating mission-critical applications in highly regulated enterprise environments.

• Engineering teams consistently deliver secure resilient scalable and high-quality digital products.
• Technical solutions align with long-term architecture strategy while meeting immediate business and client needs.
• CI/CD automation testing observability and DevOps practices improve delivery reliability and time-to-market.
• Cloud-native and modernization initiatives measurably improve application scalability maintainability and operational resilience.
• Engineers grow in technical capability ownership design thinking and engineering discipline.
• AI-assisted development is adopted responsibly to improve engineering productivity while maintaining quality security and governance.
• Architecture and engineering decisions effectively balance innovation delivery speed operational stability risk and long-term maintainability.

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.

Work Authorization

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).

Working with Us

As a Northern Trust partner you will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture which has a strong history of financial strength and stability. Movement within the organization is encouraged senior leaders are accessible and you can take pride in working for a company committed to an inclusive workplace and assisting the communities we serve.

Philanthropy is deeply rooted in Northern Trusts history and is an essential element of our culture. Employees around the world give their time and talent to work for the greater good of their communities.

Reasonable Accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing adjustments to individuals with health conditions and disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process please email our HR Service Center at or alternatively you can discuss your individual requirements with the recruiter you are working with.