Director Cloud Data Platform
Northern Trust
Director Cloud Data Platform
Northern Trust
Global wealth management and asset servicing
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.
Role purpose
Own the strategy, product roadmap, engineering direction, adoption, reliability and end-to-end service performance of enterprise data and database platforms.
Platform scope
Analytical platforms and services, including Snowflake, Databricks and Microsoft Fabric, together with OLTP and operational database services such as Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle and Azure Cosmos DB.
Operating model
Lead platform engineering and product ownership while partnering closely with Operations Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) and support teams for stable, secure and efficient day-to-day service delivery.
Leadership profile
A technically credible platform leader who can translate business demand into product capabilities, influence vendors and stakeholders, and grow adoption across the enterprise.
The Cloud Data Platform Product & Engineering Leader is accountable for the full lifecycle of enterprise data and database platform services. The role combines deep technical leadership with product ownership, service management and commercial influence. It covers analytical and AI-enabled platforms as well as operational and transactional database services, ensuring that the portfolio evolves as a coherent enterprise capability rather than a collection of individually managed technologies.
The leader will define the platform vision and multi-year roadmap, prioritize investment, guide engineering standards, drive adoption, and ensure reliable and secure service delivery. The role will work closely with Operations SDMs, platform engineering teams, architecture, security, risk, application teams, data engineering teams and strategic technology vendors to ensure smooth day-to-day operations while progressing modernization, automation and customer-led product outcomes.
This is not a traditional people-manager or operations-only position. It requires a leader who can move comfortably between executive strategy, architecture and engineering decisions, product prioritization, vendor negotiations, operational governance and direct engagement with internal platform consumers.
Scope boundary: This team will provide Cloud Data Infrastructure Platform Engineering as a product. It will build and operate the shared infrastructure, platform services, automation, controls and self-service capabilities that enable data engineering, analytics, data science and AI/ML teams. It will not perform the application-level data engineering or data scientist activities owned by those consuming teams.
· Own the enterprise product strategy and roadmap for Cloud Data Infrastructure Platform services supporting analytics, AI/ML, data engineering, OLTP and operational database workloads.
· Run the platform portfolio as a set of secure, resilient, scalable, cost-effective and consumable enterprise products.
· Establish clear service boundaries: the team owns Cloud Data Infrastructure Platform Engineering as a product, while consuming teams retain responsibility for data pipeline development, data transformation, analytical model development, data science and business use-case implementation.
· Balance innovation and modernization with operational stability, regulatory obligations and service performance.
· Increase adoption through clear service offerings, reusable patterns, self-service capabilities, simplified onboarding and an improved developer and customer experience.
· Provide the technical depth and leadership needed to challenge design decisions, guide engineering priorities and build credibility with highly technical teams.
· Create an effective partnership between product and engineering ownership and Operations SDMs responsible for service delivery, support coordination and operational governance.
· Own and communicate the vision, product strategy and multi-year roadmap for the enterprise cloud data and database platform portfolio.
· Define the target Cloud Data Infrastructure Platform portfolio across analytical platforms, AI/ML enablement, OLTP databases, NoSQL services, integration foundations and associated platform capabilities.
· Translate business, application, analytics and engineering demand into prioritized product capabilities, investment proposals and measurable outcomes.
· Manage the full product lifecycle, including capability discovery, business case development, prioritization, delivery, adoption, modernization and retirement.
· Build and maintain a transparent roadmap that balances strategic transformation, regulatory commitments, technical debt, resilience, customer demand and cost optimization.
· Establish product principles, service boundaries, service tiers, consumption models and a clear platform service catalog.
· Own enterprise infrastructure platform direction and service outcomes for Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric and other cloud data platform services.
· Own platform direction and service outcomes for OLTP and operational database technologies including Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Azure Cosmos DB and relevant managed cloud database services.
· Ensure appropriate patterns exist for relational, NoSQL, distributed, streaming and analytical workloads, with clear guidance on technology selection and fit-for-purpose use.
· Drive interoperability across analytical and transactional platforms so that application data, operational data and analytical data can be governed and consumed effectively.
· Partner with architecture and application teams on modernization, database migration, platform consolidation and cloud-native adoption decisions.
· Provide hands-on technical leadership across cloud architecture, database platform engineering, reliability engineering, infrastructure as code, DevSecOps, shared data integration foundations and platform automation.
· Define and govern reference architectures, engineering standards, reusable patterns, deployment approaches, observability requirements and operational readiness criteria.
· Guide the design of secure, scalable, resilient and cost-efficient platform services across Azure and/or AWS environments.
· Challenge designs constructively, lead technical trade-off decisions and ensure engineering investment addresses reliability, maintainability, performance and customer experience.
· Drive automation, policy as code, self-service provisioning, standardized onboarding, automated controls and self-healing capabilities.
· Sponsor technical debt reduction and platform modernization while maintaining service continuity.
· Drive adoption of Cloud Data Infrastructure Platform products by application engineering, data engineering, analytics, data science, AI/ML and business-aligned technology teams.
· Build a structured engagement model with internal clients to understand demand, pain points, onboarding barriers and future capability needs.
· Simplify the customer journey from discovery and architecture consultation through provisioning, onboarding, production readiness and ongoing support.
· Develop platform documentation, reference architectures, reusable infrastructure patterns, onboarding guidance, training and community engagement that accelerate responsible platform usage.
· Measure adoption, consumption, customer satisfaction, onboarding lead time, developer productivity and realized business value.
· Act as the senior escalation and relationship owner for strategic platform consumers.
· Work closely with Operations SDMs to ensure smooth, reliable and predictable day-to-day running of the platform portfolio.
· Define clear accountability and handoffs across product, engineering, operations, managed service providers and vendor support organizations.
· Partner with SDMs on service reviews, incident trends, problem management, change quality, capacity, availability, support demand, service risks and continual improvement.
· Ensure new capabilities and major changes meet operational readiness, supportability, monitoring, documentation, resilience and recovery requirements before production adoption.
· Provide technical and product leadership during major incidents, recurring service issues and high-risk changes, while ensuring long-term corrective actions are prioritized on the roadmap.
· Ensure runbooks, support models, escalation routes, knowledge management and service ownership remain current as the platform evolves.
· Align engineering automation and SRE priorities with recurring operational pain points to reduce manual effort, incident volume, risk and support cost.
· Own platform outcomes for availability, performance, scalability, recoverability, security, compliance and operational resilience.
· Define and govern SLAs, SLOs, service health indicators, capacity thresholds, recovery objectives and key risk measures.
· Ensure backup, disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities are designed, documented, tested and improved.
· Partner with cyber security, technology risk, compliance and data governance teams to embed controls into platform architecture and engineering workflows.
· Drive timely remediation of vulnerabilities, audit findings, control gaps, end-of-life technologies and operational risks.
· Ensure regulated and sensitive workloads are supported through appropriate access controls, encryption, segregation, monitoring and evidence.
· Own strategic relationships with technology vendors such as Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle and other relevant partners.
· Influence vendor roadmaps by articulating enterprise requirements, service gaps, control needs, adoption barriers and future use cases.
· Lead executive and technical governance with vendors, including product reviews, escalation management, support effectiveness and roadmap alignment.
· Partner with sourcing and finance on commercial strategy, licensing, consumption commitments, contract outcomes and value realization.
· Evaluate emerging technologies and vendor capabilities using clear architectural, operational, commercial, security and adoption criteria.
· Hold managed service providers and support partners accountable for service quality, engineering outcomes, skills, productivity and continuous improvement.
· Own platform cost transparency, forecasting, unit economics, optimization and investment planning.
· Establish showback or chargeback-ready consumption views where appropriate and help consumers understand the cost impact of design and usage decisions.
· Drive optimization across licensing, compute, storage, data movement, retention, reservations, support models and platform consolidation.
· Balance cost efficiency with reliability, performance, security and strategic growth requirements.
· Act as a trusted advisor to senior technology, architecture, engineering, risk and business stakeholders.
· Present product strategy, roadmap choices, investment cases, platform health, adoption, risk and value outcomes to executive forums.
· Influence priorities across teams without relying solely on direct authority, and resolve competing interests through clear data, principles and enterprise outcomes.
· Create clear decision papers, executive scorecards and recommendations that connect technical choices to business value and risk.
· Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing, globally distributed team spanning platform engineering, database engineering, reliability and operations capabilities.
· Build deep technical capability while strengthening product thinking, customer orientation, ownership and commercial awareness.
· Establish clear objectives, accountability, development plans, succession coverage and communities of practice.
· Create a culture of engineering excellence, experimentation, learning, constructive challenge and operational discipline.
· Attract and retain talent capable of operating across legacy, current and emerging data and database technologies.
Domain
Representative Technologies
Leadership Focus
Analytics & AI
Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Spark
Infrastructure platform engineering, governed self-service, workload enablement and scale
OLTP & Relational
Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, managed relational database services
Transactional performance, availability, migration, modernization and lifecycle management
NoSQL & Distributed
Azure Cosmos DB and relevant cloud-native NoSQL services
Global distribution, scalability, data modelling, consistency and cost management
Integration & Pipelines
Airflow, dbt, Kafka, cloud-native integration and orchestration services
Shared integration foundations, reusable infrastructure patterns, interoperability, observability and deployment automation
Engineering Foundation
Terraform, GitHub, CI/CD, containers, Kubernetes, monitoring and policy as code
Secure self-service, standardization, automation, controls and reliability
· Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or a related discipline. A master's degree is preferred.
· 15+ years of overall technology experience, including significant experience in cloud, data, database, platform engineering or infrastructure services.
· 10+ years of relevant experience across platform engineering, database engineering, cloud engineering, data engineering, SRE or technology product leadership.
· 5+ years of leadership experience with accountability for globally distributed engineering and/or operations teams.
· Proven ownership of an enterprise technology platform, product or service portfolio, including strategy, roadmap, investment prioritization and adoption.
· Demonstrated experience with both analytical data platforms and OLTP or operational database platforms.
· Experience leading enterprise-scale services in Azure and/or AWS, preferably within a regulated environment.
· Proven success influencing senior stakeholders, architecture forums, strategic vendors and internal clients.
· Experience partnering with service delivery leaders, operations teams and managed service providers to deliver stable and continuously improving services.
· Demonstrated ability to convert technical strategy into funded roadmaps, measurable delivery outcomes and increased platform adoption.
· Deep knowledge of at least two major analytical or data engineering platforms, such as Snowflake, Databricks or Microsoft Fabric.
· Strong knowledge of OLTP database platforms, including Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL, with working knowledge of Oracle and Azure Cosmos DB or comparable services.
· Strong understanding of database architecture, performance, availability, backup and recovery, replication, security, migration and lifecycle management.
· Practical experience with cloud architecture, infrastructure as code, Terraform, GitHub-based CI/CD, automation, observability and secure deployment practices.
· Understanding of data pipelines, streaming, orchestration and engineering frameworks such as Spark, Airflow, dbt and Kafka.
· Ability to lead architecture and engineering discussions while remaining outcome-oriented and accessible to non-technical stakeholders.
· Product management capability, including discovery, roadmap prioritization, customer feedback, adoption measurement and value realization.
· Strong commercial judgment and experience managing vendor performance, support relationships, licensing and consumption-based services.
· Executive communication, negotiation, conflict resolution and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
· People leadership with a track record of mentoring technical leaders, developing talent and building accountable teams.
· Clear, funded and actively governed multi-year product roadmap aligned to enterprise technology and business priorities.
· Increased adoption and responsible consumption of analytical, AI/ML and OLTP platform services.
· Reduced onboarding time and improved customer experience through standardized, automated and self-service capabilities.
· Consistent achievement of reliability, performance, security, recoverability and compliance objectives.
· Effective partnership with Operations SDMs, demonstrated through clear accountability, improved service performance and closure of recurring operational issues.
· Reduced incident recurrence, manual effort, technical debt, operational risk and support cost through engineering-led improvements.
· Improved productivity for application, data engineering, data science and analytics teams through reusable infrastructure patterns, platform services and standards.
· Measurable cost efficiency and transparent consumption management across the platform portfolio.
· Strategic vendor relationships that improve support outcomes, influence roadmaps and deliver commercial value.
· Strong stakeholder confidence in the platform organization as a product, engineering and service partner.
The successful candidate will be a technically strong, commercially aware and customer-oriented platform leader. They will combine the discipline required to run critical enterprise services with the ambition to modernize the portfolio and grow adoption. They will be equally credible with engineers, Operations SDMs, architects, risk partners, vendors, application owners and executives, and will create alignment around a clear product strategy and measurable enterprise outcomes.
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 essential element of our culture. Employees around the world give their time and talent to work for the greater good of their communities.
Reasonable Accommodation
Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing adjustments to individuals with health conditions and disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at [email protected], or alternatively you can discuss your individual requirements with the recruiter you are working with.
About Our Pune Office
The Northern Trust Pune office, established in 2016, is now home to over 3,000 employees. The office handles various functions, including Operations for Asset Servicing and Wealth Management, as well as delivering critical technology solutions that support business operations across the globe.
Our Pune team takes our commitment to service to heart. In 2024, they volunteered more than 10,000+ hours into the communities where they live and work. Learn more.
Global wealth management and asset servicing
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