Principal Engineer Senior Vice President

Citi is looking for a Principal Engineer to join its Payments Technology team, where you will drive the technical vision and hands-on engineering behind one of the most strategically important payment platforms in global financial services. This is an end-to-end technical leadership role — spanning core APIs, microservices architecture, integrations, and the infrastructure that underpins a comprehensive suite of payment capabilities for Citi's clients worldwide. If you combine deep engineering craft with the instinct to solve complex design problems and the conviction to raise standards across a team, this is the role for you.

Responsibilities

• Architect and deliver end-to-end technical solutions across the payments platform, from core client-facing APIs through to integrations and supporting infrastructure.
• Set and enforce engineering standards across the team — championing clean code, SOLID principles, and disciplined design practices that reduce technical debt and improve long-term maintainability.
• Lead design reviews, proof-of-concept initiatives, and technical experiments that evaluate new approaches and establish the best path forward for platform evolution.
• Translate complex system requirements into clear, well-structured software design artifacts that guide consistent, high-quality implementation across engineering teams.
• Guide and mentor engineers at all levels on what good code and good design look like in practice, through hands-on collaboration, pairing, and direct technical coaching.
• Coordinate technical delivery across internal and cross-functional teams, owning estimation, solution planning, and implementation leadership for concurrent initiatives.
• Embed resilience and high-availability thinking into every layer of the architecture, ensuring platform reliability at the scale Citi's clients demand.
• Manage technical risk with transparency and pragmatism, identifying issues early and communicating clearly to protect delivery timelines and platform integrity.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 10 or more years of hands-on design and development experience, with deep Java expertise and a demonstrable commitment to clean code and SOLID engineering principles.
• Practical experience building medium to large-scale applications using Spring Boot, Microservices, and Kafka on open-source technology stacks.
• Hands-on experience with MongoDB and a strong grasp of data modelling and persistence patterns within distributed systems.
• Proven ability to design and build resilient, high-availability architectures that perform reliably under real-world, high-throughput conditions.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and single-click deployment workflows, with familiarity across tooling such as Tekton, Harness, Lightspeed, or OpenShift.
• Fluency in test-driven and behaviour-driven development practices, including writing unit and integration tests using JUnit and standard testing frameworks.
• An active practitioner of AI tools and generative AI technologies, applying them to drive engineering productivity and delivery efficiency.
• Clear, confident communicator who can articulate technical decisions and surface delivery risks effectively to both engineering and non-technical audiences.

Beneficial Skills & Qualifications

• Experience authoring functional and technical specification documentation to a standard that enables independent implementation by distributed engineering teams.
• Familiarity with site reliability engineering principles and a genuine interest in how reliability engineering shapes product development outcomes.
• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• A master's degree or equivalent postgraduate qualification in a relevant technical field.

What We Offer

At Citi, you will work on technically demanding, high-stakes payment systems that operate at genuine global scale — the kind of engineering environment where craft, curiosity, and accountability matter every day. This role offers the platform, the autonomy, and the collaborative team culture to do your best technical work while shaping how the next generation of payment technology is built.

• Hybrid working model designed to support both deep focus and strong team collaboration.
• A senior technical platform where your architectural decisions and engineering standards directly influence how global payment systems are designed, built, and scaled.
• Exposure to genuinely complex, mission-critical engineering challenges across a high-performing global technology function — the kind that demand precision, creativity, and deep expertise.
• Access to continuous learning and professional development opportunities, including staying connected to the latest technologies such as Generative AI and putting them into practice.
• A performance-driven team environment that values growth mindset, pragmatic problem-solving, and engineers who take ownership of outcomes end to end.
• Competitive compensation and financial wellbeing benefits calibrated to the seniority and strategic impact of the role.
• Wellbeing support and work-life balance initiatives that help you perform at your best over the long term.

Apply now and bring your engineering depth to a Payments Technology team at Citi where technical leadership, principled design, and high-impact delivery are the standard — not the exception.

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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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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.

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.