About Northern Trust
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, Security Engineer is a senior individual contributor and technical lead responsible for shaping, engineering and operationalizing enterprise security platforms across Northern Trust. This role goes beyond hands-on administration: it sets technical direction, defines durable engineering patterns, mentors engineers, influences cross-functional partners and ensures security platforms operate with the reliability, evidence quality and control discipline expected in a regulated financial institution. The role suits an engineer who can move comfortably between executive-level risk discussions, architecture decisions and deep technical troubleshooting.
What You'll Do
Technical Lead Across Security Platform Domains
Serve as the technical authority for security platform engineering decisions and operational governance.
Design, engineer and operate security tools spanning zero-trust, SASE/SSE, network, vulnerability & exposure management, AI guardrails, and SaaS.
Define engineering patterns, implementation standards and operational runbooks that enable consistent adoption across business units and technology teams.
Develop maturity models and metrics to measure assurance and compliance.
Coordinate cross-functional security initiatives across engineering, infrastructure, and application teams.
Key Deliverables
Design, Engineer, Coordinate and Operate:
Intrusion prevention(IPS) across next-gen firewalls
Vulnerability scanning platforms and unified vulnerability management(UVM) layer
Enterprise SASE / SSE security platforms
Secure web gateway, CASB, and cloud access protection
SaaS application protection and monitoring
Secure remote access and internet traffic inspection
Browser isolation and modern web threat prevention
AI gateway controls that govern how users and applications consume LLMs and AI services
ServiceNow integrations (Vulnerability Response, ITSM, CMDB)
Own technical outcomes for platform health, upgrades, capacity, resilience, lifecycle management and vendor escalations across the stack.
Define and publish metrics on coverage, control effectiveness, SLA adherence, tool health, control performance and measurable risk reduction.
Support audits and regulatory exams (PCI-DSS, SOX, GLBA, OCC/FFIEC) by ensuring controls are designed for evidence quality, traceability and repeatable operation.
Author runbooks and executive-ready documentation that can be used by engineering, operations, risk and audit stakeholders.
Lead evaluation of new capabilities, proofs of concept and tool rationalization efforts, with clear recommendations based on risk reduction, operational fit, cost and control outcomes.
What You'll Bring
Typically 15+ years of experience in information technology, cybersecurity, cloud, infrastructure, network security or platform engineering, with demonstrated ownership of enterprise-scale security platforms.
Proven ability to operate as a senior technical leader: setting direction, influencing without direct authority, mentoring engineers and making sound tradeoffs across security, reliability, usability and compliance.
Deep hands-on experience with at least one SSE/SASE platform, including ZTNA, secure web gateway policy, segmentation, connector architecture and…