Sr. Lead, Software Engineering

Northern Trust Corp; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 115,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Northern Trust Corp seeks a Senior Lead Software Engineer in Chicago to drive hands-on technical leadership across enterprise digital solutions in client onboarding and enrollments. You will guide design, architecture reviews, and modernization efforts while mentoring engineers and ensuring secure, scalable products.

The role emphasizes Java/JEE, Spring Boot, REST, microservices, and cloud-native delivery on Azure, with a strong focus on CI/CD, automated testing, and governance.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in Java/JEE, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices, and enterprise development.
• Strong experience designing cloud-native solutions on Microsoft Azure.
• Experience with Oracle/SQL, Elasticsearch, MQ/Solace, and enterprise integration tech.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across design, development, modernization, and delivery of digital solutions.
• Lead architecture reviews ensuring scalability, security, performance, and resiliency.
• Promote clean-code, TDD, and contract-first development across teams.
• Design and deliver cloud-native, API-first architectures on Azure and modern tooling.
• Mentor engineers and drive engineering standards, patterns, and best practices.

Skills

Java/JEE

Spring Boot

REST APIs

Microservices

Azure

CI/CD

TDD

Linux/Networking

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Microsoft Azure

Oracle/SQL

Elasticsearch

MQ/Solace

Job description

## Sr. Lead, Software EngineeringApply: Chicago, IL: Full time: Posted Yesterday: R162619**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 world’s 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 24,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service. ## Role OverviewThe **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.## Key Responsibilities### Technical Leadership & Engineering* 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.### Cloud, Platform & Modernization* 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.### DevOps, Quality & Automation* 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.### AI-Assisted Engineering* 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.### Engineering Excellence & Team Enablement* 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.### Application Reliability, Risk & Governance* 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.### Collaboration & Strategic Influence* 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.## Required Qualifications### Technical Skills* **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.### Leadership & Professional Skills* 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.## Education & Experience* Bachelor's 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.## Preferred Qualifications* **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.## What Success Looks Like* 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:$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.* **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).