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 ResponsibilitiesTechnical 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 QualificationsTechnical 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.
