Head of Enterprise KYC Technology Risk Engine Development- Director

Citi•Jersey City, NJ

13d•$170,000 - $300,000

About The Position

This senior engineering leadership role is responsible for the design, development, delivery, and operational excellence of Citi's Customer Risk Scoring (CRS) and Decisioning Engines. The role leads engineering teams building and maintaining real-time and batch calculation engines that evaluate customer risk across the KYC, Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) lifecycle. The team ensures risk engines are accurate, explainable, audit-compliant, and performant at scale. The role balances distributed systems engineering, complex rule execution, and graph-based analytics to deliver trustworthy risk scores for client onboarding and continuous customer monitoring. This is a highly visible, high-scrutiny function central to demonstrating robust and defensible risk decisioning to regulators, auditors, and internal control functions. The Head of KYC Technology Risk Engine Development drives the team's strategic vision and execution. The role involves leading the end-to-end software development lifecycle for core KYC risk calculation engines, scoring platforms, and decisioning services; designing and delivering real-time and batch systems; and leading and developing a high-performing engineering team. The position partners with quantitative analysts, data science teams, risk, compliance, and other stakeholders to productionize models and provide auditable risk decisions. The role is based in Jersey City, New Jersey. The listed annual full-time salary range is $170,000 to $300,000. Eligible employees may also receive discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi describes its benefits as including medical, dental and vision coverage, a 401(k), life, accident and disability insurance, wellness programs, and paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays; offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and hire date.

Requirements

10 or more years of experience leading distributed, high-throughput engineering within KYC, anti-money laundering, or broader risk-decisioning technology.
Proven expertise in KYC technology management and hands-on proficiency with Finargo.
Experience architecting and delivering distributed, high-throughput systems, ideally in KYC, AML, CDD/EDD, or broader risk decisioning.
Experience delivering stream-processing and event-driven architectures that support low-latency, real-time service design.
Experience partnering with data science and quantitative teams to move risk and scoring models from research into production systems.
Understanding of the KYC, CDD, EDD, and AML lifecycle and how risk scoring connects to onboarding and case management systems.
Experience building scoring systems with algorithmic explainability, reconciliation, and audit readiness for regulators and internal control functions.
Exceptional leadership and collaboration skills, including the ability to inspire engineering talent and build consensus across engineering, data science, risk, and compliance stakeholders.
Strategic judgment to balance innovation with regulatory defensibility and audit rigor.
Bachelor’s or university degree, or equivalent experience; a master's degree and managerial experience may also be relevant.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree and managerial experience.
Experience with graph-based analytics.
Experience productionizing predictive models and machine learning algorithms such as anomaly detection, behavioral scoring, and automated risk tiering.

Responsibilities

Lead the end-to-end software development lifecycle for core KYC risk calculation engines, scoring platforms, and decisioning services.
Architect and deliver high-throughput, low-latency, fault-tolerant microservices for real-time API-driven and batch customer-risk algorithms.
Design stream-processing architectures to ingest customer data updates, sanctions and Politically Exposed Person alerts, and transactional signals for continuous risk scoring.
Partner with quantitative analysts and data science teams to productionize predictive models and machine learning algorithms, including anomaly detection, behavioral scoring, and automated risk tiering.
Ensure scoring engines provide algorithmic explainability, factor-level breakdowns, and deterministic reproducibility for compliance audits and regulatory inquiries.
Develop resilient, standardized APIs integrating with Front-Office Onboarding Portals, Relationship Manager tools, and Case Management systems.
Build secure, scalable connectors to internal reference databases and external RegTech data sources.
Build and maintain a robust reconciliation process for validating the risk model.
Improve audit capabilities and support evidence on risk changes for regulatory, internal audit, and operations reporting requirements.
Drive the team's strategic vision and ensure execution of its commitments.
Manage, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of software engineers, distributed systems developers, data engineers, and QA automation specialists.
Collaborate across engineering, data science, risk, and compliance stakeholders, balancing innovation with regulatory defensibility and audit rigor.

Benefits

Competitive base salary, reviewed annually.
Discretionary annual performance-related bonus.
Comprehensive medical coverage.
401(k) with Citi match in US locations.
Generous paid time off, increasing with tenure.
Paid parental leave.
Employee Assistance Program.
Access to learning and development resources.
Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
Life, accident, and disability insurance.
Wellness programs.
Paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays.
Eligible employees may receive discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards.