Senior Lead Full Stack Developer

Northern Trust; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 114,500 - 194,700; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k and pension

Health and welfare benefits

Paid time off

Life and accident insurance

Discretionary bonus program

Job summary

Northern Trust in Chicago is seeking a Senior Lead Full Stack Developer to provide technical guidance and oversee critical services. This role demands expertise in Java and Spring Boot, along with hands-on experience with Kafka and Azure technologies. Key responsibilities include leading full stack service design, ensuring operational stability, and mentoring engineering teams. A comprehensive benefits package, including a discretionary bonus, is provided. The salary range is $114,500 - $194,700 USD.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software development experience in enterprise environments.
• Experience with cloud-native systems.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of full stack services using event-driven architecture.
• Ensure services are reliable and operational prior to release.
• Act as a senior escalation point for production issues.

Skills

Java and Spring Boot

Kafka

REST API design

Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Job description

Overview

The Senior Lead Full Stack Developer will provide hands-on technical guidance, owning the design, build, and operational stability of critical services and integrations. This role is accountable for delivering high-quality, scalable, and resilient solutions while setting engineering standards and guiding development teams. The role combines deep technical execution with leadership responsibilities, acting as the primary technical authority for Java-based services, event-driven processing, and cloud-native deployments on Azure.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of full stack services using event driven architecture.
• Own end-to-end delivery of features and technical capabilities, from design through production support.
• Ensure services are reliable, observable, and operationally ready prior to release.

Backend & Integration Development

• Design and implement backend services using Java and Spring Boot.
• Build and maintain REST APIs that integrate with vended applications and upstream and downstream systems.
• Design and operate event-driven workflows using Kafka, including producers, consumers, retries, and error handling.

Data & Persistence

• Design and manage data models and access patterns using Azure Cosmos DB.
• Ensure data consistency, performance, and scalability aligned with integration patterns.
• Partner with data and platform teams on schema evolution and data governance requirements.

Cloud & Platform Engineering

• Deploy and operate services on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Contribute to containerization, Helm charts, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Partner with platform teams to ensure best practices around scaling, resiliency, and cost efficiency.

Operational Excellence & Stability

• Act as a senior escalation point for production issues.
• Lead root cause analysis and drive permanent fixes for systemic issues.
• Ensure monitoring, alerting, and logging are implemented and tuned for actionable insights.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Provide technical direction and code-level guidance to engineers within the workstream.
• Set expectations for code quality, testing, and engineering discipline.
• Mentor senior and mid-level developers, promoting ownership and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Partner closely with product owners, architects, and upstream and downstream teams.
• Communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and delivery impacts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to planning, dependency management, and delivery commitments.

Required Skills & Experience

Core Technical Skills (Mandatory)

• Strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka in production environments.
• Strong REST API design and implementation experience.
• Experience with Azure Cosmos DB, including performance and scalability considerations.
• Experience deploying and operating services on Azure AKS.

Additional Qualifications

• 12 plus years of software development experience in enterprise environments.
• Experience building and supporting distributed, cloud-native systems.
• Working knowledge on data engineering and modern data platform such as Snowflake, Databricks.
• Strong understanding of production support, observability, and operational readiness.
• Experience working in regulated or high-availability environments preferred.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills.

Salary Range

$114,500 - 194,700 USD

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.

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 [e-mail].