Senior AI Application Development Lead, Senior Vice President

Citi is seeking a Senior AI Application Development Lead to spearhead the architecture and delivery of intelligent, distributed systems at the heart of one of the world's premier financial institutions. In this role, you will lead an innovative engineering team within Citi Wealth Technology, driving strategic solutions across Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Distributed Computing for our global wealth and private banking client base.

This role is structured as 60% technical leadership, team mentorship, and architectural governance, and 40% hands-on systems design, prototyping, and core development. You will guide engineering squads, elevate development standards, and own end-to-end architecture across complex AI platforms — spanning modern LLM orchestration frameworks, cloud-native infrastructure, and scalable backend services.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Mentorship (60%)

• Engineering Direction & Governance: Provide technical direction and architectural oversight across multiple engineering squads within Wealth Technology, ensuring adherence to enterprise design principles, scalability standards, and engineering best practices.
• Team Mentoring & Talent Development: Coach and mentor mid-level to senior engineers, conducting high-impact code reviews, technical deep-dives, and career growth coaching.
• Modern AI Engineering Practices: Drive team adoption of modern developer productivity tools, including AI coding agents (such as GitHub Copilot and Devin), establishing frameworks for accelerated software delivery.
• Stakeholder Alignment & Solution Strategy: Partner with business leaders, product managers, and cross-functional teams to translate strategic business requirements into robust, forward-looking technical roadmaps using Jira, Confluence, and GitHub.
• Security & Quality Governance: Champion DevSecOps principles, embedding automated testing, code quality, and security scanning (via Checkmarx, Snyk, Black Duck) across all CI/CD pipelines.

Hands-On Architecture & Development (40%)

• AI & Intelligent Systems Design: Architect, prototype, and build production-grade AI/ML solutions using Python and Java, integrating LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex) and leveraging Google Vertex AI agent services.
• Distributed & Event-Driven Systems: Architect high-throughput, fault-tolerant event streams and data pipelines utilizing Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and modern distributed streaming patterns.
• API & Backend Service Engineering: Design and implement resilient, low-latency microservices and API gateways using FastAPI, Flask, or Spring Boot, backed by PostgreSQL and Redis.
• Cloud & Container Infrastructure: Deploy and manage resilient containerized applications on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, utilizing Helm charts, CI/CD automation (Jenkins, Tekton, Harness), and observability suites (Prometheus, Grafana, AppDynamics, Splunk).
• Embed security and code quality practices across the engineering lifecycle using tools such as Checkmarx, Snyk, and BlackDuck, ensuring all solutions meet enterprise security and compliance standards.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 12+ years of progressive software engineering and architecture experience, with a proven track record of technical leadership and team mentorship.
• Leadership & Architecture: Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams, driving architectural decisions, conducting technical design reviews, and fostering engineering excellence.
• Core Languages: Deep hands-on proficiency in Python and/or Java, with strong database design and querying skills in SQL.
• Production AI & LLM Systems: Hands-on experience architecting and delivering AI/ML and LLM-driven applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, chunking strategies, and orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, or Vertex AI APIs).
• Distributed Systems & Event Streaming: Strong expertise in designing distributed, event-driven architectures with streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka or Apache Flink.
• Cloud-Native & Container Platforms: Substantial experience deploying and managing workloads on Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift, with cloud platform expertise on AWS or GCP and Helm chart management.
• Data Architecture: Strong foundation in relational database architecture (e.g., PostgreSQL) and caching/in-memory solutions (e.g., Redis).
• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• A genuine commitment to writing clean, maintainable, and reusable software, paired with a strong sense of ownership and accountability for delivered outcomes.

Beneficial Skills & Qualifications

• Experience with modern AI coding agents such as Devin or GitHub Copilot, or equivalent AI-assisted development tools used to accelerate engineering delivery.

• Frontend & Full-Stack Development: Practical experience or familiarity with modern frontend frameworks and libraries (e.g., React, Next.js, Angular, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS) to facilitate end-to-end prototyping and seamless collaboration with frontend teams.
• Multi-Agent Systems: Exposure to multi-agent frameworks (e.g., Google ADK, CrewAI, AutoGen, LangGraph).

• Familiarity with workflow scheduling and orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow or AutoSys for managing complex data and processing pipelines.
• Experience configuring and interpreting observability tooling across Prometheus, Grafana, AppDynamics, and Splunk in a production environment.

What We Offer

At Citi, you will work on technology challenges that operate at genuine global scale — systems that underpin financial markets, private banking, and client experiences across more than 160 countries. This is a role for engineers who want strategic ownership, deep technical engagement, and the opportunity to define how AI and cloud-native platforms are applied in one of the world's most complex financial institutions.

• Hybrid working model — 3 days in the office and 2 days working remotely, giving you flexibility alongside meaningful team collaboration.
• Ownership of high-impact AI and distributed systems projects, with the scope to influence architecture decisions across Wealth Technology organization.
• Access to a modern, broad technology stack — spanning LLM frameworks, cloud platforms, full-stack engineering, and AI-assisted development tools — with the space to experiment, prototype, and implement forward-looking solutions.
• A performance-driven environment where your contributions are recognized and your career progression is tied to the impact you deliver.
• Mentorship and leadership opportunities, with the ability to shape the technical direction and engineering culture of a high-caliber AI team.
• Competitive financial wellbeing and benefits package, reflective of the seniority and strategic nature of this position.

Apply now to bring your AI engineering and development expertise to a team building the intelligent systems that define the future of global banking.

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In addition to salary, Citi’s offerings may also include, for eligible employees, discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi offers competitive employee benefits, including: medical, dental & vision coverage; 401(k); life, accident, and disability insurance; and wellness programs. Citi also offers paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays. For additional information regarding Citi employee benefits, please visit citibenefits.com. Available offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.

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We use automated processing, including artificial intelligence, for our legitimate business interests (or our reasonable and appropriate business purposes) to identify and align the candidate's skills and abilities with a specific job opening. Additionally, if you so choose, or consent, we can match your skills and abilities to other suitable roles at Citi.

Importantly, all our hiring processes and decisions, including determining your suitability for a role, are conducted, checked, and decided by individuals. Our automated processing and AI do not involve relying on automatic or autonomous decision-making. Please refer to any Jurisdictional Considerations, with specific provisions for your country (where relevant) for further details.

Illinois residents – AI Notice and Right

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Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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