Principal Compliance Architect

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.

We are looking for an experienced Compliance Architect to help shape the technology strategy across Financial Crimes, Regulatory Compliance and Regulatory Change.

This is a highly influential architecture role where you will define the future technology landscape, drive platform modernisation and ensure our compliance technology operates as a connected, scalable and resilient ecosystem.

You’ll provide strategic leadership across Cloud, SaaS, data, integration and enterprise platforms, partnering with Technology, Compliance, Risk, Audit and Product teams to deliver secure and effective solutions.

What You’ll Do

• Define and drive the target-state architecture and technology roadmap across Compliance and Financial Crimes technology.
• Provide architecture leadership across areas such as AML, KYC, sanctions, fraud, surveillance, regulatory change and GRC.
• Lead technology modernisation, including cloud adoption, platform consolidation and reduction of technical debt.
• Design and govern architecture across cloud-native, SaaS, hybrid and on-premise environments.
• Evaluate strategic platforms and vendor solutions, considering scalability, security, resilience, integration and cost.
• Shape enterprise integration and data architecture across APIs, microservices, event-driven systems and modern data platforms.
• Provide architecture oversight for compliance platforms such as Actimize, ServiceNow IRM and other financial crime, surveillance and regulatory technology solutions.
• Champion modern engineering practices including DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code and resilient architecture.
• Partner with senior business and technology stakeholders to guide major technology investments and transformation initiatives.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for an experienced technology or architecture professional with strong enterprise architecture knowledge and experience working across complex technology environments.

You should bring:

• Strong experience in enterprise, solution, application, data or integration architecture.
• Experience across at least two of the following areas:
  • Financial Crime: AML, KYC, sanctions, transaction monitoring, fraud or case management.
  • Regulatory Compliance: trade surveillance, communications surveillance, regulatory reporting, ethics/conduct or conduct risk.
  • Regulatory Change / GRC: compliance monitoring, testing, risk assessments, regulatory change or audit management.
• Strong knowledge of cloud and hybrid architectures, APIs, microservices, event-driven architecture, Kubernetes/container platforms and platform engineering.
• Experience with modern data technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks, data lakes, data warehouses or advanced analytics platforms.
• Understanding of resiliency, disaster recovery, high availability and operational readiness.
• Experience evaluating vendor solutions and influencing technology and architecture decisions.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to work effectively across Technology, Compliance, Risk, Audit and senior leadership.
• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or a related field is preferred, along with significant experience in enterprise architecture, software engineering, data architecture or technology leadership.

Experience within financial services, banking, risk, compliance, financial crime or regulatory technology would be particularly valuable.

Work Authorization

Applicants must have the right to work in Ireland at the time of application and for the duration of employment.

Please note that Northern Trust is unable to provide employment permit sponsorship for this role. This includes Critical Skills Employment Permits, General Employment Permits, Intra-Company Transfer Employment Permits, Stamp 1G permissions, and other employment permits under Irish immigration frameworks.

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 MyHRHelp@ntrs.com, or alternatively you can discuss your individual requirements with the recruiter you are working with.