Sr. Lead, Software Engineering

Northern Trust • Chicago, IL

10d • $114,500 - $194,700

About The Position

The Senior Lead Software Engineer provides hands-on technical leadership across the design, development, modernization, and delivery of digital solutions supporting Northern Trust’s Client Onboarding & Enrollments portfolio. The role combines software engineering expertise with architecture influence, cloud engineering, DevOps, AI-assisted development, and team enablement. It partners with Product, Architecture, Engineering, QA, SRE, business, and other stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable, resilient, high-performing digital products that meet enterprise architecture, security, risk, and governance requirements.

The role leads engineering across applications and teams, sets and improves engineering standards, mentors engineers, and addresses complex technical challenges. It designs cloud-native solutions using Microsoft Azure, modernizes legacy systems, strengthens automated testing and CI/CD, and advances application reliability, observability, security, and operational readiness. It also encourages responsible adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices and influences technical direction through collaboration with globally distributed teams.

The position requires a bachelor’s degree in a technical field and at least eight years of software engineering experience, including hands-on technical leadership and complex application development. Experience in regulated enterprise environments and Agile organizations is required; experience with digital products, workflow automation, transaction processing, client onboarding, or financial services platforms is preferred. Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without employment-based visa sponsorship.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience, including significant hands-on development and technical leadership.
• 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 or 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 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 technical and business stakeholders.
• Comfort operating in complex, fast-paced, globally distributed enterprise environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Experience leading complex application development initiatives.
• Experience working within Agile product and engineering organizations.
• Experience delivering enterprise-grade systems in regulated environments.
• Authorization to work in the U.S. without employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with digital products, workflow automation, transaction processing, client onboarding, or financial services platforms.
• Microsoft Azure certification, particularly in Azure architecture or development.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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, and spec-driven or 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 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.
• Modernize legacy applications and services toward scalable, API-first, event-driven, and cloud-native architectures.
• Ensure solutions support availability, observability, scalability, performance, resiliency, and operational supportability.
• Provide technical guidance for data architecture and integration patterns involving 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 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 productivity, quality, and effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities for AI-assisted development, intelligent automation, code generation, testing, documentation, and engineering productivity in development workflows.
• Establish 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.
• Provide technical guidance to Lead and Senior Software Engineers while promoting engineering ownership and accountability.
• Foster engineering excellence, continuous learning, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Lead by influence across engineering teams and drive alignment on technology decisions, standards, and strategic 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.
• Address vulnerabilities, technical debt, and production risks to maintain application reliability and resilience.
• Ensure solutions comply with architecture standards, security policies, technology controls, regulatory expectations, and governance requirements.
• Partner 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 to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Influence technology direction and engineering priorities through technical expertise and data-driven recommendations.
• Collaborate with globally distributed teams across North America, EMEA, and India.
• Identify dependencies, constraints, technology risks, and opportunities, and recommend pragmatic solutions.

Benefits

• Retirement benefits, including 401(k) and pension.
• Health and welfare benefits, including medical, dental, vision, spending accounts, and disability coverage.
• Paid time off.
• Parental and caregiver leave.
• Life and accident insurance.
• Other voluntary and well-being benefits.
• Discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior