AI Partnerships Lead – Technology Vendor & Start-up Evaluation, VP

Citi • Jersey City, NJ

2d • $142,320 - $213,480 • Onsite

About The Position

The AI Partnerships Lead (Technology Vendor & Start-up Evaluation) sits within Citi's Head of AI Organization and serves as the primary technical gatekeeper and integration champion for enterprise-wide AI vendor onboarding and adoption. This senior role is responsible for identifying, rigorously evaluating, and scaling external AI technologies from initial ecosystem scouting through compliant production deployment ensuring a holistic, end-to-end approach to AI adoption across Citi's global business units. Unlike venture capital or corporate investment functions, this role applies an entirely enterprise-centric lens, assessing whether AI startups and technology partners can operate securely, reliably, and compliantly within a tier-one global bank. The ideal candidate is a hands-on senior technologist with deep AI fluency, firsthand exposure to the VC or accelerator ecosystem, and the executive presence to translate complex technical evaluations into clear strategic recommendations. This is a high-impact, highly visible role at the intersection of cutting-edge AI innovation and large-scale enterprise governance.

Requirements

• At least 6 years' experience in technology delivery for top tier banks, or prior experience operating within or closely alongside a Strategic Partnerships, VC, accelerator, CTO office, Head of AI organization, or corporate AI/innovation function strongly preferred.
• Expert hands-on experience in cutting-edge AI including LLMs (proprietary APIs and open-weight models), RAG architectures, agentic systems, LLM evaluation frameworks, and synthetic data generation techniques.
• Practical experience with AWS and GCP, including strong understanding of on-prem deployment constraints, hybrid architecture patterns, and regulated workload requirements.
• Ability to design rigorous, unbiased technical evaluation frameworks including bakeoffs, evals, and benchmarking that drive defensible enterprise decisions.
• Excellent executive communication and storytelling skills — able to distill complex technical evaluations into clear, compelling recommendations for senior executives and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Proactively scout the global AI, fintech, and enterprise software startup ecosystems to surface technologies aligned with Citi's strategic AI priorities and maintain a prioritized pipeline of vetted AI startups and technology partners across domains including LLMs, agentic frameworks, RAG, AI infrastructure, and synthetic data.
• Explore and prototype creative solutions — including synthetic data generation and other frontier techniques — to unlock use cases that conventional approaches cannot address within a regulated environment.
• Design and operate isolated sandbox environments for hands-on technical evaluation of startup and vendor products under realistic enterprise conditions.
• Lead structured, objective competitive bakeoffs — defining evaluation criteria, building test harnesses, and benchmarking performance, cost, latency, security, and ease of integration.
• Independently develop rapid proofs-of-concept (PoCs) to validate specific business use cases before committing organizational resources to full deployment.
• Partner with Risk, Procurement, Legal, Information Security, and Model Risk Management (MRM) teams to shepherd AI vendors through Citi's onboarding and Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) processes.
• Advise startup partners on adapting their products and delivery models to meet Citi's infrastructure, security, and data governance requirements.
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with frontier AI labs, VC firms, accelerators, cloud providers (AWS, GCP), and the broader fintech and startup ecosystem. Represent the Strategic Partnerships team and Citi's AI organization externally at conferences, industry forums, startup ecosystem events, and accelerator demo days.
• Act as a trusted internal authority on the modern AI stack — including frontier and open-weight LLMs, RAG architectures, agentic frameworks, evaluation methodologies, and emerging AI infrastructure.
• Manage multiple concurrent evaluations and integration workstreams across a fast-moving, dynamic portfolio.

Benefits

• medical, dental & vision coverage
• 401(k)
• life, accident, and disability insurance
• wellness programs
• paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior