Low Latency Infrastructure Engineering, Equities Trading, Director

Role Overview:

Citi Equities Technology is seeking a senior leader for its low-latency infrastructure engineering group. The person in this role will be responsible for design, architecture & delivery of Citi’s trading infrastructure across colocation sites and strategic data center assets. 

This role requires a combination of deep technical expertise in low latency infrastructure and networking systems, trading microstructure knowledge and strong leadership and execution capabilities. The successful candidate will lead a global engineering team to deliver platform infrastructure in close partnership with the software delivery teams, Citi’s enterprise technology group and trading functions. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the strategic roadmap for low latency trading infrastructure across Global Equity Markets.  

• Architect and deliver high performance colocation environments, connecting exchange venues, market data providers, and internal trading systems.  

• Lead design and implementation of ultra-low latency Layer 1/Layer 2 network infrastructure between exchange colocation facilities and Citi data centers.  

• Drive selection, evaluation, and deployment of cutting-edge low latency switching, routing, timing, and telemetry technologies.  

• Work with vendors partners, exchange providers, telecom carriers, and hardware manufacturers to optimize connectivity, resiliency, and performance.  

• Design resilient cross-connect and market access strategies across global exchanges and liquidity venues.  

• Establish standards for low latency Linux infrastructure, including Operating System optimization, kernel bypass technologies, CPU isolation, NUMA optimization, interrupt tuning, and deterministic performance engineering.  

• Lead engineering teams responsible for infrastructure provisioning, bare-metal automation, deployment pipelines, hardware lifecycle management, and production engineering.  

• Develop scalable operational models enabling rapid deployment of trading infrastructure, including procurement workflows, capacity management, rack design, and colocation expansion.  

• Build highly secure and compliant environments aligned with Citi operational, cyber, and regulatory requirements.  

• Collaborate with application engineering teams to optimize end-to-end trading latency and infrastructure determinism.  

• Drive observability, performance benchmarking, packet capture analysis, and latency telemetry across the trading stack.  

• Manage relationships with exchanges, telcos, connectivity providers, and colocation operators globally.  

• Lead incident management and infrastructure resiliency programs for mission-critical trading environments.  

• Mentor and develop senior engineers and technical leads across infrastructure and platform engineering disciplines.  

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience in low latency infrastructure engineering within electronic trading, capital markets, hedge funds, trading venues or equivalent financial institutions.  

• Proven experience building and operating exchange colocation environments for Equities or multi-asset electronic trading platforms.  

• Deep expertise in low latency network design, including:  

• Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or equivalent ultra-low latency switching platforms  

• Layer 1 optimization  

• Multicast market data distribution  

• Precision timing/PTP  

• Optical transport and cross-connect architecture  

• Exchange connectivity design  

• Strong understanding of modern low latency hardware platforms, NICs, FPGA-enabled environments, and packet processing optimization.  

• Advanced Linux systems engineering expertise, particularly:  

• RHEL & Kernel tuning  

• CPU pinning and isolation  

• IRQ balancing  

• NUMA optimization  

• DPDK/XDP/kernel bypass technologies  

• Deterministic systems performance tuning  

• Experience designing resilient infrastructure across colocation facilities and large-scale enterprise data centers.  

• Strong knowledge of automation and infrastructure engineering practices using Python, Ansible, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code methodologies.  

• Experience managing hardware procurement, vendor negotiations, colocation buildouts, and telecom contracts.  

• Demonstrated ability to lead globally distributed engineering teams in high-pressure, mission-critical environments.  

• Strong understanding of operational risk, resiliency, cybersecurity, and regulatory requirements within financial services.  

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills with ability to interact effectively with senior technology leadership, trading desks, and external partners.