The Lead Engineer is a senior engineering leadership role within Centrally Cleared Over-the-Counter (OTC) Derivatives Clearing Technology, responsible for leading the design, delivery, and continuous evolution of strategic clearing platforms supporting global OTC clearing businesses across multiple Central Counterparties (CCPs).
The role combines deep technical leadership with hands-on ownership of key delivery initiatives, including new product onboarding, regulatory change, platform modernization, and scalability improvements. The successful candidate will lead significant workstreams and cross-functional engineering efforts while driving improvements in software development lifecycle practices, engineering productivity, automation, and operational excellence.
A key aspect of the role is championing modern engineering practices and emerging technologies, including AI-assisted software development, automation frameworks, developer tooling, and platform engineering capabilities, to improve delivery efficiency, software quality, and organizational effectiveness.
The role requires close partnership with Product, Operations, Business, and Technology stakeholders and offers the opportunity to influence the future architecture and engineering direction of Citi's OTC Clearing platforms.
Responsibilities
Technical Leadership & Architecture
- Provide technical leadership across the OTC Clearing technology estate, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, secure, and aligned to strategic architecture objectives.
- Lead the design and implementation of complex technology solutions supporting new products, new CCP onboarding, business growth initiatives, and regulatory requirements.
- Drive engineering decisions across system architecture, integration patterns, data models, and application design.
- Partner with senior engineers and architects across Markets Technology and enterprise engineering teams to ensure alignment with firmwide standards and strategic direction.
- Perform technical reviews and provide guidance on architecture, design quality, performance, and maintainability.
Program & Workstream Leadership
- Lead major delivery initiatives and technology workstreams from inception through production deployment.
- Coordinate across development, QA, production support, infrastructure, operations, and business stakeholders to ensure successful execution.
- Manage competing priorities while balancing strategic investment, technical debt reduction, platform stability, and regulatory commitments.
- Identify risks, dependencies, and delivery challenges and drive effective mitigation strategies.
- Provide regular progress updates and technical status reporting to senior management and project stakeholders.
Engineering Excellence & Productivity
- Drive continuous improvements in engineering practices, development processes, and delivery methodologies.
- Establish and promote best practices for software engineering, code quality, testing, release management, observability, and operational readiness.
- Lead initiatives to improve the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC), including increased automation, standardization, and reduction of manual processes.
- Champion adoption of AI-enabled development capabilities, developer productivity tooling, knowledge management solutions, and software engineering automation.
- Measure and improve engineering effectiveness through appropriate metrics and feedback mechanisms.
Platform Stability & Operational Excellence
- Drive improvements in platform reliability, resiliency, recoverability, and operational supportability.
- Partner with production support and SRE teams to improve monitoring, alerting, incident management, and root-cause analysis practices.
- Ensure solutions meet established standards for performance, capacity, security, and availability.
- Support disaster recovery planning, testing, and operational readiness activities.
Collaboration & Mentoring
- Develop and mentor engineers across the organization, promoting strong engineering culture and technical excellence.
- Foster effective collaboration across global teams and disciplines.
- Act as a trusted technical advisor to business, operations, and technology stakeholders.
- Contribute to hiring, talent development, and succession planning efforts within the engineering organization.
Qualifications
Required Experience
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering and application development, preferably within capital markets or clearing technology.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex engineering initiatives in large-scale, distributed environments.
- Proven track record delivering strategic technology projects from design through implementation.
- Experience leading technical teams or major project workstreams involving multiple stakeholders and delivery groups.
Technical Expertise
- Strong software engineering background with expertise in designing and building scalable enterprise applications.
- Experience working with distributed systems, messaging technologies, event-driven architectures, APIs, and large-scale data processing solutions.
- Strong knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and modern software engineering practices.
- Experience driving engineering productivity initiatives, automation strategies, and development lifecycle improvements.
- Familiarity with AI-assisted software development tools and emerging engineering productivity technologies.
Business & Domain Knowledge
- Experience within OTC derivatives, clearing, post-trade processing, futures, or related capital markets domains preferred.
- Understanding of clearing workflows, trade lifecycle processing, and regulatory requirements affecting financial markets technology.
- Ability to translate business requirements into practical and scalable technical solutions.
Leadership Competencies
- Strong technical leadership with the ability to influence without direct authority.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in complex, global organizations.
- Strong problem-solving capabilities and a passion for continuous improvement.
- Proven ability to mentor engineers and elevate engineering standards across teams.
Education:
- Bachelor’s degree/University degree or equivalent experience
- Master’s degree preferred
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Job Family Group: Technology------------------------------------------------------
Job Family:Applications Development------------------------------------------------------
Time Type:Full time------------------------------------------------------
Primary Location:Jersey City New Jersey United States------------------------------------------------------
Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:$176,720.00 - $265,080.00
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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Most Relevant Skills Please see the requirements listed above.------------------------------------------------------
Other Relevant Skills For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.------------------------------------------------------
Anticipated Posting Close Date:Oct 02, 2026------------------------------------------------------
Automated Processing and AIWe 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.
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
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering and application development
- Experience leading complex engineering initiatives in large-scale, distributed environments
- Track record delivering strategic technology projects from design through implementation
- Experience leading technical teams or major project workstreams involving multiple stakeholders and delivery groups
- Strong software engineering background designing and building scalable enterprise applications
- Experience with distributed systems, messaging technologies, event-driven architectures, APIs, and large-scale data processing solutions
- Knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and modern software engineering practices
- Experience driving engineering productivity initiatives, automation strategies, and development lifecycle improvements
- Familiarity with AI-assisted software development tools and emerging engineering productivity technologies
- Experience within OTC derivatives, clearing, post-trade processing, futures, or related capital markets domains
- Understanding of clearing workflows, trade lifecycle processing, and regulatory requirements affecting financial markets technology
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
- Master's degree
- Strong technical leadership, communication, stakeholder management, problem-solving, mentoring, and collaboration skills
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 — Benefits coverage is positioned as comprehensive, including health, dental, and vision insurance plus on-site clinics, prescription drug support, and disability coverage. Family-building support such as fertility assistance is described as a notable differentiator within the overall package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are framed as strong, highlighted by a 401(k) with matching and additional plan options like a Roth 401(k). Financial support is reinforced through discounts and broader financial guidance resources tied to the benefits ecosystem.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellbeing support extends beyond insurance through programs like an Employee Assistance Program, counseling/legal resources, and gym or wellness reimbursement. These offerings increase the perceived total rewards value even when cash compensation sentiment varies by role.
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.
