Principal, AI Engineer

AI Engineering Team Lead

As a key member of our AI Engineering team who builds, ships, and owns production-grade generative AI systems, lead the design and implementation of secure, scalable, and compliant AI platform powered by LLM's-powered on Azure AI Foundry, working across multiple model providers (Claude / Anthropic, GPT / OpenAI, and others), applying modern AI design patterns (RAG, agents, tool use, orchestration) to solve real business problems in a highly regulated financial environment.

Responsibilities include:

• Leading development of a portfolio of client-facing AI capabilities and integration methods.
• Developing and overseeing business unit wise approach to integrate structured and unstructured data into NT's enterprise AI framework.
• Architecting and implementing data pipelines that integrate structured and unstructured data from internal banking systems, external feeds, and cloud platforms for AI/ML use cases.
• Driving our semantic architecture and engineering approach for Northern Trust intelligence.
• Collaborating with the AI consulting team, business units, data scientists, model risk teams, and other stakeholders to understand data requirements for AI models.
• Ensuring sound practices are executed to deliver and maintain metadata management, data lineage, and audit trails for AI data assets.
• Providing leadership to multiple Technical Delivery teams to prioritize and refine critical data deliverables.
• Working closely on vendor negotiations and guiding data solutions with procurement and transformation teams.
• Providing guidance for regulatory compliance processes, audits, and internal reviews.
• Acting as End-to-End Data Integration Product Management Vision and Roadmap leader in support of AI transformation programs.
• Supporting real-time and batch data ingestion from asset management vendor platforms.
• Optimizing data workflows for performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency across hybrid cloud environments.
• Partnering with cybersecurity and compliance teams to ensure data privacy, encryption, and access controls are enforced.
• Contributing to the development of enterprise-wide AI architecture standards and governance frameworks.
• Providing indirect leadership across lateral teams of data analysts focused on improving data accountability, access control, and user enablement.
• Providing mentoring and coaching to senior, mid-level, and junior engineers, product managers, and architects.

Knowledge:

• Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, VS Code, Git Hub Copilot, and data integration tools.
• Hands-on experience building LLM / GenAI applications production grade AI patterns.
• Solid SQL and PostgreSQL skills; experience with PGVector or a comparable vector database.
• Comfort designing and consuming REST APIs; understanding of authentication, rate limiting, and error handling.
• Working knowledge of at least one major model provider API—Anthropic (Claude) and/or OpenAI (GPT)—including prompt design, function/tool calling, and streaming.
• Experience with AI/ML frameworks and AI concepts.
• Familiarity with financial data providers.
• Deep understanding of asset management domain, data governance, regulatory compliance, and risk management in banking.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Understanding of SQL, Oracle, Exadata, Snowflake, Data Bricks, etc.
• Understanding of development
  
  Languages:
  
  Python,.NET/C#, React, and Java.
• Understanding of operating systems:
  Unix/BASH Shell, Windows, Linux OS.
• Proficient in generative AI and LLM data preparation for financial use cases.

Experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience in data engineering or integration, preferably in financial services or banking.

Salary Range:

$137, 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.

Work Authorization:

Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future. Northern Trust will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work visa status for this opportunity (no sponsorship is available for H-1B, L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, F-1, J-1, OPT, CPT or any other employment-based visa).

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, you will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture, which has a strong history of financial strength and stability. Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to an inclusive workplace and assisting the communities we serve.

Philanthropy is deeply rooted in Northern Trust's history and is an…