About the Team
The Startups & Partnerships team is the forward scout of the Citi's Head of AI Organization. Our mandate: identify, evaluate, and rapidly onboard the emerging technologies that will define Citi's next chapter with Artificial Intelligence as our number one strategic priority right now. We don't sit in a lab waiting for ideas to trickle in. We move across every line of business at Citi, sit down directly with business stakeholders and clients, and go toe-to-toe with the sharpest startups and frontier AI labs in the market. We run fast, we run lean, and we run with the full weight of a global institution behind us.
Role:
As an AI Engineer on the Startups & Partnerships team, you will be at the tip of the spear for Citi's AI strategy - building, testing, and shipping real applications that touch real business problems across the bank, not writing whitepapers about them from the sidelines.
You'll get a level of exposure that's rare in a Tier-1 global bank: direct access to business requirements, hands-on evaluation of the newest models and platforms from the industry's leading AI labs, and the mandate to move at startup speed inside an institution operating at global scale. If you want to build things that matter, get them in front of real users fast, and shape how one of the world's largest financial institutions adopts AI - this is the seat.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and ship AI applications - architect, develop, and deploy production-grade AI-powered tools, pipelines, and workflows that solve real business problems across Citi's lines of business.
- Evaluate emerging AI technology - run structured proof-of-concepts and sandbox "bake-offs" to rapidly assess new models, platforms, and startup tools (LLMs, agentic frameworks, orchestration layers) for real-world fit.
- Prototype at speed - turn a business idea into a working demo in days, not quarters, and iterate quickly based on stakeholder feedback.
- Integrate across the stack - connect LLMs and agentic systems to enterprise APIs, data pipelines, and lightweight front-end or tooling layers to deliver end-to-end working solutions.
- Deliver PoCs into production pathways - work with governance, risk, and platform teams to shepherd validated solutions from prototype toward scaled deployment.
- Communicate impact - translate technical work into clear, compelling narratives for senior business and technology stakeholders.
Skills & Experience
- A full-stack engineer with applied AI/LLM experience - this is explicitly not a data science or ML research role. We need builders, not modelers.
- Proven experience building and shipping AI applications, pipelines, and workflows in live, production environments - not just notebooks and academic experiments.
- Hands-on proficiency with Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, and agentic frameworks and orchestration tools (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, or similar).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals - comfortable working across the stack, from backend services and API integrations to lightweight front-end or internal tooling layers.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills - you can work directly with business leaders and clients, not just other engineers.
- A track record of learning and adopting new tools and platforms quickly as the AI landscape evolves.
- Comfort operating in a large, regulated, global institution while bringing a startup-speed mentality to your work.
- Experience working directly with startups, venture teams, or technology scouting functions. (Desirable)
- Familiarity with vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or knowledge graph-based retrieval. (Desirable)
- Experience with containerization and cloud-native deployment (Docker, Kubernetes) for AI services. (Desirable)
- Prior exposure to financial services, banking, or other highly regulated industries. (Desirable)
- Experience presenting technical concepts to non-technical, senior business audiences. (Desirable)
What we’ll provide you
By joining Citi Belfast, you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days working at home per week), but also receive a competitive base salary (which is annually reviewed), and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits such as:
- 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
- A discretional annual performance related bonus
- Private Medical Care & Life Insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Pension Plan
- Paid Parental Leave
- Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
- Access to an array of learning and development resources
Visit our Global Benefits page to learn more.
Alongside these benefits Citi is committed to ensuring our workplace is where everyone feels comfortable coming to work as their whole self, every day. We want the best talent around the world to be energized to join us, motivated to stay and empowered to thrive.
#LI-AH4
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Job Family Group: Technology------------------------------------------------------
Job Family:Applications Development------------------------------------------------------
Time Type:Full time------------------------------------------------------
Most Relevant Skills Please see the requirements listed above.------------------------------------------------------
Other Relevant Skills For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.------------------------------------------------------
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.
If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi.
View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.
Skills Required
- Full-stack software engineering experience with applied AI or LLM experience
- Experience building and shipping production AI applications, pipelines, and workflows
- Hands-on proficiency with LLMs and prompt engineering
- Experience with agentic frameworks and orchestration tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or AutoGen
- Strong software engineering fundamentals across backend services, API integrations, and lightweight front-end or internal tooling
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills
- Ability to learn and adopt new tools and platforms quickly
- Ability to work in a large, regulated, global institution
- Experience working directly with startups, venture teams, or technology scouting functions
- Familiarity with vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation, or knowledge graph-based retrieval
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes for AI services
- Experience in financial services, banking, or another highly regulated industry
- Experience presenting technical concepts to senior non-technical business audiences
Citi Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Citi and has not been reviewed or approved by Citi.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is presented as comprehensive, including free in-network preventive care, mental-health resources, and the Be Well Program. Materials also state new hires have access to health and insurance benefits from the outset.
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Retirement Support — The retirement plan offers a $1-for-$1 match up to 6% of eligible pay. New employees are eligible for the plan, with automatic enrollment after 90 days if they do not enroll themselves.
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Inclusive Benefits Coverage — Benefits highlight fertility treatment coverage, adoption/surrogacy reimbursement up to $30,000, and disability coverage. Coverage extends to spouses and domestic partners regardless of gender identity or sexuality, with gender-affirming care-related support noted.
Citi Insights
What We Do
Citi's mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress. Our core activities are safeguarding assets, lending money, making payments and accessing the capital markets on behalf of our clients. We have 200 years of experience helping our clients meet the world's toughest challenges and embrace its greatest opportunities. We are Citi, the global bank – an institution connecting millions of people across hundreds of countries and cities.
