Principal, Cloud Engineer - R129984

Northern Trust - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Principal

Chicago, IL

10,001+ employees

Real Estate

About the position

Northern Trust is seeking a dynamic Principal, Cloud Engineer with an emphasis in Automation, Networking, and Security engineering and operations to join an organization undergoing an exciting transformation to the cloud. This individual will have a strong cloud engineering background with demonstrated experience in building, automating, and securing highly available, multi-region cloud infrastructure environments to protect Northern Trust's cloud-hosted assets and applications. The role requires a principal leader on infrastructure-as-code (IaC) automation, particularly with tools like Terraform, to guide pattern architecture and provide acceleration to development teams. The successful candidate will be an expert in modern software DevOps and CI/CD tooling, such as GitHub, GitHub Actions, ADO, and Jenkins, to provision infrastructure resources and prevent configuration drift. In this position, the Principal Cloud Engineer will act as a senior technical advisor to the DevOps team, helping to enable the adoption of cloud best practices across the enterprise by focusing on broader strategic priorities for leadership. The role involves evaluating new technology options for cloud automation and vendor products, making recommendations to leadership for integration into DevOps infrastructure frameworks. Collaboration with product, architecture, and other stakeholders is essential to ensure that cloud technologies are designed in accordance with product roadmaps and well-architected frameworks. The responsibilities also include investigating and resolving complex cloud infrastructure-related issues, recommending and developing solutions, and creating documentation of reengineering processes as required. The Principal Cloud Engineer will participate in IT Service Management (ITSM) change, incident, and general requests for cloud platform support for business as usual (BAU) operations. Additionally, mentoring junior DevOps engineers is a key aspect of this role to ensure the team possesses the necessary skills and capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Principal leader on infrastructure-as-code (IaC) automation (e.g., Terraform) to guide pattern architecture via IaC to provide acceleration to dev team end users programmatically.
• Expert in modern software DevOps and CI/CD tooling, such as GitHub, GitHub Actions, ADO, Jenkins, etc., to provision infrastructure resources and prevent configuration drift.
• Acts as senior technical advisor to DevOps team to help enable adoption of cloud best practices across enterprise by focusing on broader strategic priorities for leadership.
• Evaluates new technology options for cloud automation, vendor products to make recommendations to leadership to integrate into DevOps infrastructure frameworks.
• Collaborate with product, architecture, and other stakeholders to ensure cloud technologies are designed in accordance with product roadmaps and well architected frameworks.
• Investigate and resolve complex cloud infrastructure related issues and recommend and develop solutions to issues and create documentation of reengineering processes as required.
• Participate in IT Service Management (ITSM) change, incident, and general requests for cloud platform support for business as usual (BAU) operations.
• Mentor junior DevOps engineer personnel to ensure team has necessary skill and capabilities.
• Manage firewall technologies such as Azure Front Door, Akamai WAF/CDN via automation and possess networking fundamentals to identify root causes of application connectivity issues.
• Support cloud network security platforms and collaborate with tool vendors across WAF/CDN (e.g., Akamai, Azure Front Door, etc.), DNS Management, and load balancing.
• Design, develop, and implement automation workflows for network firewalls to enhance security protocols and integrate firewall management within the broader security strategy.
• Develop, implement, and enforce Policy-as-Code (PaC) for cloud environments (Azure, AWS) to configure, detect, remediate, and enforce security standards.

Requirements

• Strong cloud engineering background with demonstrated experience in building, automating, and securing highly available, multi-region cloud infrastructure environments.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) automation tools, particularly Terraform.
• Expertise in modern software DevOps and CI/CD tooling, such as GitHub, GitHub Actions, ADO, Jenkins.
• Ability to evaluate new technology options for cloud automation and vendor products.
• Strong collaboration skills to work with product, architecture, and other stakeholders.
• Experience in investigating and resolving complex cloud infrastructure related issues.
• Knowledge of firewall technologies and networking fundamentals.
• Experience in developing and enforcing security policies based on industry benchmarks.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Azure and AWS cloud environments.
• Familiarity with Policy-as-Code (PaC) concepts and implementation.
• Knowledge of CIS/NIST industry benchmarks for security policies.