Senior Java Engineering Lead (Payments Technology) — Vice President

Citi's Core Payment Systems team is looking for a Senior Engineering Lead, Payments Technology to architect, build, and evolve the global payment processing platforms that sit at the heart of one of the world's largest financial institutions. In this Vice President-level role, you will combine deep hands-on engineering with technical leadership, setting the direction for a cross-functional team responsible for delivering highly resilient, high-throughput microservices that process transactions at global scale. This is an opportunity to shape the future of mission-critical payment infrastructure using modern engineering practices, AI-accelerated development, and cloud-native architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of critical payment applications as a Senior Engineering Lead, owning the full software development lifecycle from architectural design through to production deployment and ongoing support.

• Design and build high-throughput, low-latency microservices using Java 8+, Spring Boot, and cloud-native principles, ensuring each service meets rigorous standards for performance, scalability, and security.

• Champion modern architectural patterns - including Domain-Driven Design, event-driven architecture, and containerization with Docker and Kubernetes - to accelerate the transformation of legacy payment platforms.

• Mentor and guide a cross-functional engineering team, establishing clear technical standards through code reviews that enforce Clean Code and SOLID design principles across all payment services.

• Integrate AI-powered developer tooling - such as GitHub Copilot and LLM-based code generation - into the software development lifecycle to increase delivery velocity and enable intelligent automated test generation and static analysis.

• Architect payment systems to achieve 99.99%+ availability by implementing active-active failover, multi-region redundancy, zero-downtime deployments, and resilience patterns including Circuit Breakers, Bulkheads, and Saga-based transaction management.

• Define and own SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs for all critical payment services, lead Chaos Engineering experiments to proactively surface weaknesses, and partner with infrastructure teams to leverage Kubernetes auto-scaling and service mesh technologies for traffic management.

• Collaborate with product managers, business analysts, and operations partners to translate complex payment domain requirements into scalable, maintainable technical solutions backed by comprehensive documentation.

Required qualifications & skills

• 6+ years of software development experience delivering complex, enterprise-scale backend applications, with at least 3 years in a hands-on technical leadership capacity.

• Expert-level proficiency in Java and the Spring Boot framework, with a demonstrable ability to build and operate production-grade microservices at scale.

• Deep knowledge of microservice architecture, Domain-Driven Design, and event-driven patterns, combined with hands-on experience using messaging and event-streaming platforms such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.

• Practical experience with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms, alongside solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing strategies, and modern DevOps practices.

• Proven ability to apply Clean Code and SOLID design principles in practice - through code reviews, team coaching, and direct contribution to production codebases.

• Hands-on expertise with both relational databases (such as Oracle) and NoSQL databases (such as MongoDB), with the ability to select the appropriate technology for each use case.

• Excellent communication skills, with a track record of engaging effectively with both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders in a mission-critical environment.

Beneficial skills & qualifications

• Hands-on experience deploying and scaling AI-powered developer tools - such as GitHub Copilot or Amazon CodeWhisperer - within an enterprise engineering team, including application of AI-assisted code review, test generation, and AIOps platforms such as Dynatrace AI or Splunk ITSI to reduce MTTR and improve system reliability.

• Demonstrated ability to embed AI and ML capabilities - including anomaly detection, predictive alerting, and fraud signal enrichment - directly into production payment or financial services systems, with an understanding of responsible AI governance and regulatory compliance obligations.

• Proven experience architecting distributed payment or financial transaction systems to 99.99%+ availability, including hands-on implementation of active-active multi-region failover, blue-green or canary deployments, Circuit Breakers using Resilience4j or Hystrix, and Saga orchestration for distributed transactions.

• Experience leading Site Reliability Engineering practices, including ownership of SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs, execution of Chaos Engineering experiments using tools such as Chaos Monkey or Gremlin, and building end-to-end observability stacks with distributed tracing and real-time alerting.

• Familiarity with financial services payment standards and protocols such as SWIFT, ISO 20022, or clearing systems, gained through prior experience in a regulated financial services environment.

What we offer

Joining Citi's Core Payment Systems team means taking ownership of engineering that moves money for millions of people and institutions worldwide. You will work alongside talented engineers and technology leaders on problems that are genuinely complex, with the resources, scale, and global reach to make your solutions matter.

• A hybrid working model with 3 days in the office and 2 days working remotely, giving you flexibility alongside meaningful in-person collaboration.

• A high-impact senior role with clear ownership of technical direction across one of Citi's most strategically important engineering platforms.

• Access to cutting-edge engineering practices, including AI-accelerated development tooling and cloud-native platform capabilities at global scale.

• Continuous learning and development opportunities, including access to technical training, professional certifications, and exposure to enterprise-scale architectural challenges.

• Competitive compensation and financial wellbeing benefits commensurate with a Vice President-level position at a leading global financial institution.

• Wellbeing support and work-life balance initiatives designed to help you perform at your best over the long term.

• The opportunity to lead and grow a high-performing engineering team, shaping both the technical culture and the careers of the engineers around you.

Build the payment technology that the world relies on - apply today to join Citi's Core Payment Systems team as a Senior Engineering Lead and help define what resilient, AI-ready financial infrastructure looks like at global scale.

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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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Automated Processing and AI

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.

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