Principal Generative AI Engineer – Senior Vice President (Individual Contributor Hands-On)

Citi • Mississauga, ON

62d • Hybrid

About The Position

At Citi, we are pioneering the future of enterprise operations through innovative technology. Our COO-Technology Engineering and Architecture capability is at the forefront, responsible for architecting best-in-class platforms, driving end-to-end transformation, and integrating cutting-edge Generative AI solutions to unlock unparalleled efficiency, automation, and risk reduction across our global operations. We are seeking a visionary technical leader to define and execute the strategic future of Generative AI within our enterprise.
The Team: Innovating at Scale
Our team is a dynamic hub of engineers and innovators dedicated to solving complex business challenges with intelligent solutions. We believe in building robust, scalable products that deliver tangible impact. We foster an environment of continuous learning, rapid iteration, and strong engineering practices. Here, you'll work alongside passionate experts, leverage the latest in AI, and contribute to a culture that values clean code, thoughtful design, and direct, hands-on problem-solving. We're not just adopting AI; we're building the intelligence that powers our enterprise. We thrive on collaboration, are open to new ideas, and constantly seek to improve through constructive feedback. As a Principal Engineer, you will play a critical role in shaping the technical direction and raising the engineering bar across the organization.
The Role:
We are seeking an exceptional Principal Generative AI Engineer to join our team as a highly influential Individual Contributor. This is a pivotal, deeply hands-on role for a truly seasoned software engineer with a profound passion for Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic frameworks. You will be instrumental in defining, leading the architecture, and personally building and deploying real-world, commercial production systems that tackle the most complex and ambiguous enterprise challenges, moving beyond proofs-of-concept to deliver strategic, firm-wide impact.
This is an Individual Contributor (IC) role with no direct people management responsibilities.
Your deep expertise in containers (especially OpenShift), mastery of Python programming, and advanced understanding of LLM/agentic frameworks will be essential as you architect significant operational efficiencies, establish new standards for engineering excellence, and mentor technically by example. If you're a builder and technical visionary who thrives on solving tough problems, delivering transformative results, influencing technical strategy, and getting your hands dirty with code, we want to hear from you.

Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive professional software engineering experience, with a significant portion dedicated to designing, building, and delivering highly scalable and impactful enterprise-grade solutions in commercial production environments, tackling complex, ambiguous challenges.
• Mastery in Python is non-negotiable, with a profound understanding of its ecosystem for advanced AI/ML development, complex data engineering, and robust backend services. Full-stack development experience, demonstrating end-to-end system ownership, is a significant advantage.
• Expert-level, hands-on experience with Generative AI concepts, Large Language Models (LLMs), transformer architectures, RAG, and advanced agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, Google ADK, Optionally AutoGen, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel).
• Deep and strategic expertise with containerization and orchestration technologies, specifically OpenShift, including leading deployment strategies and troubleshooting complex production issues.
• Demonstrated ability to architect, lead development, and deploy highly performant, large-scale AI/ML systems, defining their long-term technical strategy and ensuring operational excellence.
• Exceptional understanding of modern software development principles, clean code practices, distributed systems, advanced data structures, and algorithms, with the ability to apply them to novel problems.
• Proficiency with Relational (preferably, PostgreSQL) and Vector (preferably, pgvector) databases.

Nice To Haves

• Proficiency in additional programming languages such as Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Golang, especially in polyglot microservices architectures.
• Experience with specific frameworks like Spring (AI, Boot), N8N, or Flask, contributing to their core development or strategic usage.
• Familiarity with messaging and integration platforms such as Kafka or JMS/MQ, including architectural patterns for high-throughput, fault-tolerant systems.
• Experience leading UI development with modern frameworks like React JS or StreamLit for complex, interactive AI applications.
• Practical experience in model risk management, defining and implementing enterprise-wide AI guardrails, and establishing end-user adoption pathways for Generative AI solutions.
• A proven track record of contributing to open-source projects, presenting at industry conferences, or publishing relevant research/whitepapers in AI/ML.

Responsibilities

• Define & Lead Architecture: Set the technical vision and architect sophisticated Generative AI applications, LLM-powered solutions, and intricate agentic frameworks. Your architectural designs and hands-on implementations will primarily use Python, delivering clean, performant, scalable code directly into commercial production environments.
• Strategize & Pioneer Automation with Agents: Drive the strategic direction for intelligent agent-based automation. You will design, architect, and personally implement advanced agentic systems capable of understanding, reasoning, and orchestrating complex workflows to deliver transformative efficiency and risk reduction at scale across the enterprise.
• Establish Containerization Best Practices: Possess expert-level comfort and leadership in container technologies, specifically defining and implementing best practices for deploying and managing mission-critical applications within OpenShift environments.
• Drive Strategic Technical Direction & Ownership: Own and drive critical technical initiatives from conception to production, influencing broad technical strategy and standards across multiple teams and product lines.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence: Act as a key driver for engineering excellence, establishing and upholding rigorous software development best practices, including architectural reviews, robust testing methodologies, advanced code quality standards, and continuous integration/delivery processes for high-stakes production systems.
• Innovate & Shape the Future: Stay at the absolute forefront of Generative AI, actively identifying strategic opportunities, exploring bleeding-edge models, techniques, and frameworks. You will lead applied engineering initiatives and contribute to research, shaping our long-term technical roadmap. You will have access to state-of-the-art AI-assisted development tools like Devin and Copilot to amplify your productivity and creativity.
• Technical Thought Leadership: Act as a go-to technical expert, providing deep technical leadership, guidance, and mentorship across the organization. You will raise the technical bar for the entire team, fostering a culture of innovation, deep technical understanding, and knowledge sharing. This role is a pure individual contributor position, focused on technical impact, not direct line management.
• Overcome Ambiguity & Deliver: Thrive in an agile, fast-paced environment, taking ownership of highly ambiguous and complex problems. Prioritize rapid delivery, iterative development, and adaptability, focusing on delivering measurable business value and learning quickly from prototypes and deployments, always with a clear path to high-scale production. You will be receptive to feedback from peers and stakeholders, actively incorporating it to refine solutions and improve technical direction.
• Lead Responsible AI Implementation: Architect and champion the implementation of robust guardrails, ethical considerations, and responsible AI governance into all solutions, proactively assessing and mitigating risks in line with organizational and regulatory standards.

Benefits

• Define the Future & Impact at Scale: Lead critical, high-visibility projects that are transforming a global enterprise, working on firm-wide initiatives that directly influence our operational future and technical direction. Your architectural decisions and hands-on contributions will shape how we operate.
• Pioneer Cutting-Edge Technology: Drive the adoption and implementation of the latest Generative AI models, advanced agentic frameworks, and cloud-native technologies, amplified by state-of-the-art AI-assisted development tools like Devin and Copilot.
• Exceptional Growth & Technical Leadership: A culture of continuous learning, technical thought leadership, and opportunities to drive significant technical innovation. Benefit from extensive learning resources including Udemy for Business and Pluralsight.
• Highly Collaborative & Influential Environment: Join a highly skilled, passionate team where your technical expertise and strategic vision will be highly valued. We thrive on open communication, constructive feedback, and collective problem-solving, empowering you to influence technical direction.
• Flexible Work Environment: Embrace a hybrid working model, balancing productive in-office collaboration (3 days) with the flexibility of working from home (up to 2 days).
• Global Scale & Challenge: Tackle the most complex problems at a massive global scale, building solutions that impact users and operations worldwide.

What This Job Offers

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