Lead UNIX Engineer

Overview

About Northern Trust : Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized financial institution with a long history of operation since 1889. We provide innovative financial services and guidance to individuals, families, and institutions by upholding service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

We are looking for a UNIX Engineer who brings traditional platform depth along with modern engineering practices. You will help lead the design, deployment, and lifecycle of mission-critical UNIX platforms (Solaris, AIX, RHEL, Ubuntu) and services while contributing to DevOps tooling, Git-driven workflows, hybrid cloud strategies, and an automation mindset. This is a key role in a high-trust team that powers secure, compliant infrastructure for a global financial institution. Expect deep technical challenges, high visibility, and opportunities to influence platform direction.

Role & Responsibilities

• Core UNIX Engineering & Support – Design, secure, build, and maintain resilient UNIX environments across Solaris (10 / 11 with Zones, LDOMs), AIX 7.x (VIOS, NPIV), Ubuntu, and RHEL 5 / 10 (on physical, virtual, and hybrid platforms).
• Own OS lifecycle strategy : patching, upgrades, security baselines, and hardware refresh planning.
• Maintain high-availability solutions (Pacemaker, VCS, HACMP, RH Cluster Suite) and performance-tuned enterprise systems.
• DevOps, SRE & Automation – Embrace an SRE mindset : treat infrastructure as code, prioritize availability and observability, and automate toil.
• Automate provisioning, compliance checks, and config enforcement using Ansible, AAP, AWX, CFEngine, and scripting (bash / ksh / Python).
• Use GitHub for source control, peer-reviewed automation pipelines, change tracking, and documentation versioning.
• Contribute to CI / CD workflows for infrastructure-as-code deployments and integrate with enterprise tools like ServiceNow, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions.
• Security – Harden UNIX systems and ensure compliance with security frameworks (e.g., CIS Benchmarks, NIST, FFIEC, ISO 27001).
• Manage OS-level security policies, including firewall rules, kernel parameters, SELinux policies, and secure configurations.
• Integrate host systems with PAM, LDAP, and CyberArk Conjur for identity and privileged access management.
• Support audit, forensic, and security event investigations in coordination with InfoSec teams.
• Regularly review and remediate security vulnerabilities identified by Qualys, Nessus, or other scanning tools.
• Contribute to incident response planning, patching, SLAs, and compliance reporting.
• Design and maintain logging, audit trails, and syslog / SIEM integrations (Splunk, QRadar, etc.).
• Authentication, Authorization & Directory Services – Integrate UNIX systems with enterprise identity management platforms using LDAP, Kerberos, PAM, SSSD, and RHDS.
• Implement and enforce secure access controls, sudo policies, and RBAC.
• Collaborate with IAM and InfoSec teams on audit readiness, access provisioning, and PAM integrations.
• Monitoring, Reliability & Incident Response – Integrate systems with monitoring tools (e.g., Dynatrace, vROps) and custom health scripts.
• Support alerting, auto-remediation, and telemetry for performance and availability.
• Participate in on-call rotations, DR testing, and RCA for high-impact incidents.
• Hybrid Cloud & Platform Modernization – Support UNIX workloads on VMware (vSphere, vSAN, vXrail) and prepare platforms for future cloud integration.
• Assist with cloud-readiness assessments, modernization efforts, and immutable infrastructure adoption.
• Collaborate with Cloud DevOps and Cybersecurity teams on secure hybrid operating models.
• Documentation & Governance – Maintain robust documentation in Confluence : HLD, LLD, SOPs, DR plans, build guides, access policies, GitHub repositories, and architectural decisions.
• Ensure platforms and automation meet compliance standards (CIS, FFIEC, SOX, ISO 27001).
• Lead or contribute to engineering design reviews, change boards, and audit remediation efforts.

Required Skills & Experience

Work Conditions & Availability

Business-hours role with rotating on-call and scheduled change windows (nights and weekends).

Participation in BCP / DR exercises, audit cycles, and cross-region platform support is expected.

Why This Role Matters

You are not just keeping the lights on; you are building the runway for modernization. Your work underpins secure financial operations, supports compliance, and helps evolve traditional UNIX platforms toward modern, observable, and automatable infrastructure.

Salary

Salary Range : 99,600 - 169,200 USD

Salary range is a good-faith estimate of base pay. Northern Trust provides a comprehensive benefits package including retirement benefits, health and welfare benefits, paid time off, parental and caregiver leave, life & accident insurance, and other voluntary and well-being benefits. A discretionary bonus program may include an equity component.

Working with Us

As a Northern Trust partner, you will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability enable us to explore new ideas. Movement within the organization is encouraged; senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to the communities we serve. Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

We would love to learn how your interests and experience could fit with one of the world's most admired and sustainable companies. Build your career with us and apply today. #MadeForGreater

Reasonable Accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need an accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at the address provided.

We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people. Apply today and discuss your flexible working requirements so we can achieve more together.

Key Skills

Data Center Experience, VMware, NFS, Solaris, Linux, Perl, Scripting, Shell, Chef, openSUSE, Puppet, Oracle

Employment Type : Full-Time

Experience : years

Vacancy : 1

Monthly Salary : 99,600 - 169,200

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