Global AI Engineering Leader

About Northern Trust:

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.

At Northern Trust, we're leading the AI evolution through our One Horizon AI Program, embedding responsible, enterprise-scale AI capabilities to drive growth, resiliency, and productivity. With a start-up perspective, we're fundamentally transforming how our business operates and how we serve our clients. We're building AI capabilities in the cloud, from agentic AI systems and agent workspaces to production ML pipelines , along with the teams and responsible AI governance structures needed to support their development and deployment. Join us and be a part of our multi-year transformation journey to embed responsible, scalable AI capabilities across the enterprise-enabling intelligent automation, data-driven insights, and enhanced client and partner experiences. You'll have access to cutting-edge AI technologies and the latest development tools , real autonomy to shape our AI strategy, and opportunities to solve unique challenges at the intersection of AI and finance as you help create the agentic AI future for Northern Trust.

The Enterprise AI team at Northern Trust is part of our Technology group and performs data science research and develops applied AI solutions to solve problems that 1) are not adequately addressed by available commercial solutions, 2) enhance the customer and/or employee experience and 3) provide Northern Trust with a competitive advantage. We are at the forefront of rolling out Generative AI solutions and frameworks for the bank from Proof of Concepts tofull stack development of solutions and vendor evaluations. We also serve to inspire and empower applied data science practitioners by facilitating high-quality data science education and collaboration within Northern Trust as well as with top universities and research institutions.

As a visionary AI Developer Leader, you will be a key player in developing, deploying, and maintaining state-of-the-art Generative AI solutions within the Azure cloud environment. Your role will focus on leading a team of AI engineers and working closely with other teams and architects to complete projects and provide guidance general AI topics and trends. This role requires a deep and proven understanding of traditional machine learning, current AI technologies and patterns as well as cloud computing, software engineering principals as well as strong leadership and the ability to guide a team through the entire AI solution lifecycle, from concept to production.

As a team manager, you will be expected to:

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of AI developers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Define and execute the technical global strategy for AI solution development on Microsoft Azure, ensuring alignment with business objectives.
• Oversee the design and development of AI models and algorithms to solve complex business problems.
• Drive the adoption of best practices in MLOps & LLMOps, ensuring scalable, reliable, and efficient AI model deployment and management.
• Stay abreast of the latest advancements in AI/ML technologies, particularly within the Azure ecosystem, and evaluate their potential application.
• Conduct code reviews, provide technical guidance, and contribute to the architectural design of AI systems.
• Poses excellent problem-solving, analytical skills and strong communication and collaboration abilities.
• Ensure the scalability, reliability, and security of AI solutions.
• Manage project timelines, budgets, and resources
• Communicate project status and results to stakeholders.
• Have proven experience with Azure AI services, including Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services, Copilot Studio and AI Foundry (or similar ISP tools).
• Have a deep understanding of Generative AI and LLMs, evaluation metrics and theory behind LLMs & conversational AI
• Full understanding of the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern and various tradeoffs.
• Have a working knowledge of MCP and A2A protocols for Agentic based flows.
• Have a working knowledge of AI based AI frameworks such as: LangChain, AutoGen, LangGraph, LamaIndex etc...
• Have a deep and working knowledge of IAC and automation
• Well versed in Software Quality Management (SQM) concepts and procedures.
• Be familiar with containerization i.e. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for managing and scaling containerized AI applications.
• Comply with industry standards, best practices and regulations for AI solutions.
• Work across multiple projects in a fluid environment where work is required across the full research lifecycle from forming a hypothesis, acquiring data, and developing ETL-style software to presenting findings.
• Provide guidance to other software development teams as prototypes and frameworks are engineered for full production environments

To be successful, you'll have: proven experience in:

• AI/ML development (5+ years), with at least 2 years in a leadership or management role.
• Infrastructure as code (IAC) experience in any language, Terraform is preferred
• Full stack Azure application development
• Security related concepts and controls, particularly in the cloud environment: OAuth, virtual networks, subnets, private endpoints, authentication mechanisms, identities and RBAC.
• Data protection and encryption techniques and tooling such as key vaults, encryption keys, masking and concepts such as BYOK.
• DevOps including CI/CD techniques and tools particularly Azure based and Github repos
• Running large scale (either in parallel and/or distributed) training and inference jobs on private or public cloud infrastructure
• Developing open-source software in a collaborative environment, desired but not required.
• Experience in any Graph Database development is desired but not required.

Tools/Languages required : Python, Common Python libraries (NumPy , Pandas, Sklearn, etc.), Linux based operating systems, and basic development tools (Python IDEs, source control, etc.)

Tools/Languages preferred : Advanced distributed machine learning frameworks (e.g. Keras, TF, etc.)

Education required : Computer Science undergraduate degree and strong statistical background.

Preferred Qualifications : Data Science graduate degree, finance sector experience or coursework.

Certifications : Certifications in Azure Security or DevOps are preferred, but not required. Azure AI Engineer Associate or equivalent are preferred, but not required.

Salary Range:

$164,600 - 288,000 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.

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve! Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

We'd love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the world's most admired and sustainable companies! Build your career with us and apply today. #MadeForGreater

Reasonable accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at [email protected] .

We hope you're excited about the role and the opportunity to work with us. We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people.

Apply today and talk to us about your flexible working requirements and together we can achieve greater.