Senior AI Application Development Lead, Senior Vice President

Citi • New York, NY

12d • $176,720 - $265,080 • Hybrid

About The Position

Citi is seeking a Senior AI Application Development Lead to spearhead the architecture and delivery of intelligent, distributed systems within Citi Wealth Technology. The role drives strategic solutions across artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing for global wealth and private banking clients. It combines 60% technical leadership, team mentorship, and architectural governance with 40% hands-on systems design, prototyping, and development. The position guides engineering squads, establishes development standards, and owns end-to-end architecture across AI platforms, LLM orchestration frameworks, cloud-native infrastructure, and scalable backend services.

The role leads engineering teams and architecture across Wealth Technology while also designing and building production AI/ML applications, distributed streaming systems, backend services, and containerized cloud applications. It promotes security, quality, and DevSecOps practices across the development lifecycle.

The position is hybrid, with three days in the office and two days working remotely. The primary location is New York, New York. The stated full-time salary range is $176,720 to $265,080. Citi describes its benefits package 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. Eligible employees may also receive discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards; offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.

Requirements

• 12+ years of progressive software engineering and architecture experience, with a proven track record of technical leadership and team mentorship.
• Experience leading engineering teams, driving architectural decisions, conducting technical design reviews, and fostering engineering excellence.
• Deep hands-on proficiency in Python and/or Java, with strong database design and SQL querying skills.
• Hands-on experience architecting and delivering AI/ML and LLM-driven applications, including RAG, prompt engineering, chunking strategies, and orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or Vertex AI APIs.
• Strong expertise in distributed, event-driven architectures and streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka or Apache Flink.
• Substantial experience deploying and managing workloads on Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift, cloud platform expertise on AWS or GCP, and Helm chart management.
• Strong foundation in relational database architecture such as PostgreSQL and caching or in-memory solutions such as Redis.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• Commitment to writing clean, maintainable, reusable software, with ownership and accountability for delivered outcomes.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with AI coding agents such as Devin or GitHub Copilot, or equivalent AI-assisted development tools.
• Practical experience or familiarity with frontend frameworks and libraries such as React, Next.js, Angular, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS.
• Exposure to multi-agent frameworks such as Google ADK, CrewAI, AutoGen, or LangGraph.
• Familiarity with workflow scheduling and orchestration tools such as Apache Airflow or AutoSys.
• Experience configuring and interpreting Prometheus, Grafana, AppDynamics, and Splunk in production.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical direction and architectural oversight across multiple engineering squads within Wealth Technology, ensuring adherence to enterprise design principles, scalability standards, and engineering best practices.
• Coach and mentor mid-level to senior engineers through code reviews, technical deep-dives, and career growth coaching.
• Drive adoption of modern developer productivity tools, including AI coding agents, and establish frameworks for accelerated software delivery.
• Partner with business leaders, product managers, and cross-functional teams to translate strategic business requirements into technical roadmaps using Jira, Confluence, and GitHub.
• Champion DevSecOps principles and embed automated testing, code quality, and security scanning across CI/CD pipelines.
• Architect, prototype, and build production-grade AI/ML solutions using Python and Java, LLM orchestration frameworks, and Google Vertex AI agent services.
• Architect high-throughput, fault-tolerant event streams and data pipelines using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and distributed streaming patterns.
• Design and implement resilient, low-latency microservices and API gateways using FastAPI, Flask, or Spring Boot, backed by PostgreSQL and Redis.
• Deploy and manage resilient containerized applications on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, using Helm charts, CI/CD automation, and observability suites.
• Embed security and code quality practices across the engineering lifecycle and ensure solutions meet enterprise security and compliance standards.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k).
• Life, accident, and disability insurance.
• Wellness programs.
• Paid time off packages, including vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays.
• Eligible employees may receive discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards.
• Competitive financial wellbeing and benefits package.

What This Job Offers

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