Principal Cloud Engineer

Northern Trust • Chicago, IL

37d

About The Position

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 world's 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 22,000 partners, we serve the world's most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service. We are seeking a Cloud Foundations Engineer to design, build, and maintain the core cloud infrastructure and shared services that enable our development and business teams to operate securely, reliably, and efficiently in the cloud. This role focuses on establishing the landing zones, automation, governance, and operational guardrails that form the foundation for all cloud workloads. As a Cloud Foundations Engineer, you will work across multiple teams to ensure that our cloud environments follow best practices for security, scalability, automation, and cost optimization, while enabling self-service adoption by application teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 3+ years of experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure, or platform operations.
• Proficiency with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) - Terraform preferred.
• Hands-on knowledge of networking concepts (VPC, DNS, firewalls, load balancing, hybrid connectivity).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, etc.).
• Familiarity with cloud security principles and compliance frameworks.
• Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell).
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting abilities.
• Effective communication and collaboration across technical and non-technical teams.
• Ability to balance governance requirements with developer productivity.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with multi-cloud environments.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and container orchestration (EKS, AKS, GKE).
• Knowledge of service mesh, API gateways, or serverless platforms.
• Background in FinOps (cloud cost optimization practices).
• Cloud certifications (AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect).

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain enterprise landing zones and shared cloud services.
• Manage account/subscription structures across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP.
• Build and enforce secure-by-default infrastructure patterns.
• Develop and maintain reusable IaC modules (Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep, or Pulumi).
• Build CI/CD pipelines to automate infrastructure deployment and updates.
• Enable self-service provisioning capabilities for development teams.
• Implement identity and access management (IAM) best practices.
• Configure and maintain guardrails such as policies, SCPs, and monitoring controls.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory and internal security standards.
• Design and support VPC/VNet architectures, routing, firewalls, VPNs, and interconnects.
• Establish hybrid connectivity solutions with on-premises environments.
• Deploy monitoring, logging, and auditing tools across the environment.
• Build dashboards to track cloud performance, security posture, and costs.
• Recommend and implement cost-saving measures.
• Partner with application, DevOps, and security teams to ensure smooth cloud adoption.
• Provide documentation, best practices, and training to engineering teams.
• Participate in incident response and troubleshooting when foundational services are impacted.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees