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.
The Principal Enterprise Architect is responsible for defining and advancing architecture for Global Engineering. The candidate will be a key member of the Global Engineering Architecture team whose collective responsibility is to enable system development through aligned enterprise strategies, roadmaps, golden paths, reference architectures, design patterns, standards, and governance frameworks. This role will partner with executives, enterprise architects, solution architects, application development teams, platform engineering, data, security, and the business. Must demonstrate a proven history of shaping large-scale technology solutions that address the business objectives of a complex global organization. Ensures that business strategy, market trends, technology evolution, and AI-enabled opportunities are effectively represented in the organization’s systems, platforms, data architecture, and business processes. Analyzes architectural requirements, defines the vision and target-state architecture, assesses the current state, establishes transformation roadmaps, governs the project portfolio, and partners with solution architects and engineers to realize the target state.
This individual must be delivery-oriented, enterprise-minded, and able to influence across senior business, technology, risk, security, and engineering audiences. Must be able to guide strategic direction and make pragmatic decisions that optimize business value, engineering velocity, resiliency, cost, security, regulatory expectations, and risk. Identify reusable platforms, shared engineering capabilities, overlapping functions, and opportunities to converge on standards in order to improve efficiency, quality, developer experience, and time to value across Global Engineering. The preferred candidate will have a broad background in enterprise architecture, application development, cloud-native delivery, integration, data architecture, AI-enabled solutions, platform engineering, security, and architecture governance. Must be able to work independently to solve complex problems, create and manage technology roadmaps, and collaborate effectively with a diverse set of partners.
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- Previous or current hands-on software development experience using modern application development frameworks such as Java/Spring, JavaScript/ReactJS, APIs, cloud-native services, and engineering automation.
- Significant experience with enterprise architecture patterns, architecture governance, capability modeling, target-state definition, and enterprise architecture best practices.
- Hands on experience designing and building of cloud-native architectures; preference using Azure, AWS, Tanzu, and/or Kubernetes
- Deep knowledge of API and microservice style architectures
- Experience shaping AI-enabled architecture strategies, including generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, model lifecycle management, prompt and context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and integration of AI capabilities into enterprise platforms.
- Strong understanding of responsible AI, AI risk management, model governance, explainability, data privacy, security controls, regulatory considerations, and production observability for AI-enabled systems.
- Experience using API Management Platforms and Storefronts (e.g. APIGEE, Software AG, etc)
- Experience using Kafka, Solace, and/or MQ for messaging/event streaming
- Deep knowledge of architecture frameworks such as TOGAF and/or Zachman, with the ability to apply frameworks pragmatically across business, application, data, technology, security, cloud, and AI architecture domains.
- Experience with SQL, NoSQL, data platforms, metadata, data quality, lineage, and governance capabilities required to support analytics, AI, and enterprise-scale decisioning; e.g. Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Mongo, data lakehouse, and cloud data services.
- Knowledge of software development methodologies and tools such as Agile, product-oriented delivery, Github, GH Copilot, ADO Boards, Maven/Gradle, CI/CD (Actions), MLOps, LLMOps, and architecture-as-code practices.
- Experience with DevOps best practices and toolchain / pipeline automation, Azure DevOps and Atlassian Suite preferred
- Knowledge of the financial services industry and in particular, a broad and deep understanding of products and services provided by Northern Trust.
- Has an understanding of Global Engineering domains, enterprise platforms, software delivery practices, developer experience, cloud enablement, integration, data, security, and operational resiliency in a large financial services environment.
- Strong knowledge of security frameworks and controls.
Major Duties
- Define enterprise architecture strategies and target-state roadmaps that provide business value while reducing complexity, technical debt, operational risk, and duplicated capabilities.
- Mediate conflicting priorities to drive optimal solutions.
- Identify and escalate duplication of effort, functional and technical redundancy, and opportunities to reuse Global Engineering platforms, standards, and shared enterprise capabilities.
- Create reference architectures and reusable patterns for common archetypes, including web, microservice, mobile, third-party platforms, cloud-native services, data platforms, AI-enabled applications, and automation solutions.
- Quickly build proof of concept prototypes with new technologies being researched.
- Establish AI architecture guardrails, responsible AI design patterns, model governance expectations, data readiness criteria, and production readiness standards for AI-enabled solutions.
- Partner with platform engineering, data, security, risk, and application teams to integrate AI capabilities safely into enterprise platforms and business processes.
- Enable the development organization by creating working examples
- Create cloud, platform, data, and AI-related frameworks that embed non-functional requirements, including resiliency, observability, security, privacy, performance, scalability, cost management, and operational supportability.
- Define cloud, platform engineering, DevSecOps, data, and AI delivery best practices for Global Engineering.
- Training technologists and provide project-based consulting/expertise
- Liaise with Enterprise Architecture, Global Engineering, Security, Data, Risk, Infrastructure, and application delivery groups to align architecture direction and execution.
- Solve problems collaboratively.
- Act as a subject matter expert on technologies and trends in enterprise architecture, cloud, platform engineering, middleware, data, security, infrastructure, generative AI, and AI-enabled automation.
Qualifications
- Minimum 12+ years of technology experience across application development, engineering, architecture, platform, data, cloud, or related disciplines.
- Minimum 8+ years of enterprise, solution, domain, or platform architecture experience, with demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders and govern architecture decisions at scale.
- Demonstrated experience applying AI, data, automation, cloud, and platform architecture concepts to ent
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