Principal, SW Engineer
Northern Trust4 days ago
Base Salary
$137k - $234k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and build low-latency, resilient, and scalable front-office trading services for pricing, order flow, and trade capture.
- Lead the decomposition of monolithic applications into independently deployable microservices while maintaining production continuity.
- Define service boundaries, contracts, migration paths, event models, Kafka topics, schemas, and replay or recovery patterns.
- Build and deploy cloud-native services on Azure using Azure Container Apps or AKS, Event Hubs, and Key Vault, including integration with on-premises systems.
- Write production Java or C++ code weekly and review code while setting engineering standards.
- Use AI-assisted development for legacy code analysis, test generation, refactoring, migration, and defect triage.
- Own CI/CD and automated testing for services and make production deployment routine.
- Translate business needs into technical designs and working software with traders, product owners, and architects.
- Prepare design documentation for architecture and governance reviews.
- Drive adoption of improved engineering practices, tools, and delivery methods.
- Mentor onshore and offshore engineers through pairing, design reviews, demonstrations, and hands-on examples.
Requirements
- At least 10 years of experience building production software with strong hands-on coding in Java or C++.
- Proven experience decomposing monolithic systems into microservices in live production environments.
- Deep experience with Kafka and event-driven architecture.
- Hands-on Azure experience, including Azure Container Apps or AKS, Event Hubs, Key Vault, and related services.
- Strong CI/CD experience with test automation integrated into delivery pipelines.
- Practical experience using AI coding tools such as GitHub Copilot or agent-based workflows, supported by concrete examples.
- Solid relational database skills with SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or similar technologies.
- A track record of driving team change through new practices, tools, or ways of working and gaining adoption.
- Clear communication skills with engineers and business stakeholders, including presenting ideas and leading technical discussions.
- Collaborative approach with the ability to build relationships across teams and mentor engineers.
- Experience with trading systems or other real-time, low-latency domains is preferred.
- FX experience, familiarity with FIX, market data, order management systems, or observability tools such as Application Insights and Log Analytics is preferred.
Benefits
- Comprehensive benefits include retirement benefits with 401(k) and pension, medical, dental, vision, spending accounts, disability coverage, paid time off, parental and caregiver leave, life and accident insurance, and voluntary and well-being benefits.
- The company provides a discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component.
- The role offers a flexible and collaborative work culture, accessible senior leaders, internal mobility, and an inclusive workplace.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Northern Trust
Northern Trust is a financial services company that provides asset servicing (custody and fund administration), asset management, wealth management, and banking/treasury services to institutions, corporations, and affluent families. Its business model centers on fees for assets under custody/administration and management, plus banking services. Founded in 1889 and headquartered in Chicago, it is publicly traded on Nasdaq (NTRS) and serves clients across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.