DevOps Engineering Lead (Vice President)

The DevOps Engineering Lead (Vice President) is a pivotal technical leadership role within Citi Commercial Cards & Payments Technology. Transitioning beyond tactical task execution, the C13 Engineering Lead operates as a strategic visionary, organization-wide framework architect, and senior force multiplier.

This role is responsible for driving the multi-year engineering strategy and architectural modernization across a hybrid ecosystem of 190+ applications-bridging mission-critical legacy mainframe backbones with next-generation containerized cloud platforms and automated enterprise CI/CD pipelines. The Engineering Lead directly oversees enterprise-scale initiatives across dozens of agile squads, spearheads financial and infrastructure cost optimization, owns Senior Management Team (SMT) risk and governance metrics, and champions Citi’s Developer Manifesto to foster an engineering-first culture.

Responsibilities:

A. Strategic Technical Leadership & Direction

• Multi-Year Strategy Definition: Define, articulate, and execute multi-year technical roadmaps aligned with business objectives and enterprise architectural standards.

• Engineering Frameworks & Standards: Establish and standardize organization-wide engineering blueprints, design patterns, testing automation frameworks, and development guidelines across dozens of distributed squads.

B. Architecture, Scale & Technical Complexity Management

• Hybrid Ecosystem Ownership: Oversee the architectural health, scalability, and resilience of a portfolio encompassing 190+ applications spanning legacy mainframe transaction processors, microservices, container platforms, and cloud-native solutions.

• Cloud & Platform Modernization: Lead complex cloud migration strategies, decomposing monolithic legacy components into modern, containerized private/hybrid cloud microservices.

• Toolchain & CI/CD Pipeline Evolution: Standardize modern CI/CD automation, trunk-based development, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) toolchains across all application development teams.

C. Financial Impact & Platform Cost Optimization

• Strategic Decommissioning: Drive end-to-end technical execution for legacy platform decommissions (e.g., Bitbucket migrations, deprecated middleware, end-of-life infrastructure) to eliminate redundant operational overhead and licensing fees.

• Infrastructure Optimization: Architect and migrate high-throughput workloads to cost-efficient private cloud infrastructure, actively monitoring compute utilization, storage efficiency, and capacity planning.

• Financial Accountability: Translate engineering choices into direct financial efficiencies, maximizing return on technology investments (ROTI).

D. Senior Management Team (SMT) Risk, Governance & Quality Ownership

• Executive Metrics & SMT Reporting: Directly own, track, and present engineering quality, delivery velocity, and risk posture metrics to the Senior Management Team (SMT).

• Release on Demand (ROD) Adoption: Lead organizational transformation to achieve and sustain 100% Release on Demand (ROD) capabilities across squads through automated gates and progressive delivery.

• DORA Stability & Resilience: Establish and maintain industry-leading DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics:

• Deployment Frequency (On-Demand / Continuous)

• Lead Time for Changes (< 24-48 hours)

• Change Failure Rate (< 5%)

• Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) (High resilience and automated recovery)

• Risk & Controls Compliance: Ensure strict adherence to information security, regulatory compliance, vulnerability management, and audit mandates across all application lifecycles.

E. Enterprise-Wide Sphere of Influence & Stakeholder Alignment

• Cross-Departmental Synergy: Function as a trusted advisor and force multiplier across application development teams, QA/testing organizations, infrastructure operations, product management, and vendor partners.

• Citi Developer Manifesto Champion: Propagate and embed core tenets of the Citi Developer Manifesto, driving developer experience (DevEx) enhancements, automated testing rigor, and continuous learning.
• Talent Development & Coaching: Mentor lead engineers and senior developers, guiding technical talent through structured promotion paths and engineering leadership excellence.

Qualifications:

• BS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+years of experience working in DevOps and automation
• Minimum 10 years of experience in CI/CD, Jenkins, Build Pipeline, DevOps Automation, Monitoring
• Minimum 4 Years’ Experience in Kubernetes/Cloud CI/CD pipeline and Admin activities
• Primary Skill required in Distributed and NexGen DevOps Tools
• Secondary Skill Experience in Mainframe DevOps is added advantage
• Blue Optima, CheckMarx, SonarQube, Blackduck, Python, Shell Script
• Knowledge in Middleware Deployments in WebSphere, Tomcat and WebLogic
• DevOps experience in API development in Next gen Infra
• Experience in Handling Open shift platform/Public Cloud DevOps Activities
• Knowledge with any of Commercial cards and Modernization is added advantage
• Capable of driving Solutions end to end for any DevOps solutions
• DevOps testing and Programming Knowledge is added advantage.
• Artificial Intelligence/SRE/No Ops
• App/Performance Monitoring tools like Splunk and Appd etc
• DevOps Coding Knowledge like python, Shell Script or any other DevOps Scripting tool is Mandatory

Technical / Functional Proficiency:

• Competency in understanding strategic imperatives, understanding customer experience, reimagine business processes, embrace agility, continuous stakeholder collaboration, strategic use of data, understand technology, embrace product management.
• Experience in working with Vision Plus Credit Card System with Digital Business Experience around Wallets, API, 3D Secure, etc.
• Must have experience in Microsoft tools, i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and SharePoint
• Excellent functional and product solution/design skills on Core Credit Cards VisionPlus modules
• Good knowledge on end-to-end cards features and across all applications
• Excellent documentation skills in preparing business requirement, functional specs/design, use case and functional flow documents.
• Experience with SDLC methodologies and structured systems analysis and design
• Responsible for interacting with the business, technology teams, partner systems and card processors in understanding business functionality / requirements
• Capable of knowledge gathering / reverse engineering existing functionality of application platforms through interaction with users and technical teams
• Effectively documenting functionality and requirements for use by technology teams
• Communicating functionality and requirements effectively to development teams
• Support functional design preparation and review with technology teams
• Assist testing teams in preparation and reviews of functional test scenarios
• Experience in delivering Solution Design and Process flows
• Provides all required status updates to project team, users, and various levels of management as appropriate
• Experience in Agile Methodology

Leadership Skills:

• Excellent organization skills, attention to detail, and ability to multi-task
• Experience in Financial industry i.e., Credit Cards
• Demonstrated sense of responsibility and capability to deliver quickly
• Process focused to ensure efficiency, compliance and control
• Good knowledge on productization and global code base
• Excellent communication skills. Clearly articulating and documenting technical and functional specifications is a key requirement.
• Proactive problem-solver
• Relationship builder and team player
• Flexibility to work in multiple complex projects and changing priorities

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