Low Latency Infrastructure Engineering, Equities Trading, Director

Role Overview:

Citi Equities Technology is seeking a senior leader for its low-latency infrastructure engineering group. The person in this role will be responsible for design, architecture & delivery of Citi’s trading infrastructure across colocation sites and strategic data center assets.

Thisrole requires acombination ofdeep technical expertise in low latency infrastructureandnetworking systems, trading microstructure knowledge andstrong leadership and execution capabilities.The successful candidate willleadaglobal engineering teamto deliver platform infrastructure in close partnership with the software delivery teams, Citi’s enterprise technology group and trading functions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the strategic roadmap for low latency trading infrastructure acrossGlobal Equity Markets. 

• Architect and deliver high performance colocation environments,connecting exchange venues, market data providers, and internal trading systems. 

• Lead design and implementation of ultra-low latency Layer 1/Layer 2 network infrastructure between exchange colocation facilities and Citi data centers. 

• Drive selection, evaluation, and deployment of cutting-edge low latency switching, routing, timing, and telemetry technologies. 

• Work withvendorspartners, exchange providers, telecom carriers, and hardware manufacturers to optimize connectivity, resiliency, and performance. 

• Design resilient cross-connect and market access strategies across global exchanges and liquidity venues. 

• Establish standards for low latency Linux infrastructure, includingOperating System optimization, kernel bypass technologies, CPU isolation, NUMA optimization, interrupt tuning, and deterministic performance engineering. 

• Lead engineering teams responsible for infrastructure provisioning, bare-metal automation, deployment pipelines, hardware lifecycle management, and production engineering. 

• Develop scalable operational models enabling rapid deployment of trading infrastructure, including procurement workflows, capacity management, rack design, and colocation expansion. 

• Build highly secure and compliant environments aligned with Citi operational, cyber, and regulatory requirements. 

• Collaborate with application engineering teams to optimize end-to-end trading latency and infrastructure determinism. 

• Drive observability, performance benchmarking, packet capture analysis, and latency telemetry across the trading stack. 

• Manage relationships with exchanges, telcos, connectivity providers, and colocation operators globally. 

• Lead incident management and infrastructure resiliency programs for mission-critical trading environments. 

• Mentor and develop senior engineers and technical leads across infrastructure and platform engineering disciplines. 

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience in low latency infrastructure engineering within electronic trading, capital markets, hedge funds,trading venues or equivalentfinancial institutions. 

• Proven experience building and operating exchange colocation environments for Equities or multi-asset electronic trading platforms. 

• Deep expertise in low latency network design, including: 

• Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or equivalent ultra-low latency switching platforms 

• Layer 1 optimization 

• Multicast market data distribution 

• Precision timing/PTP 

• Optical transport and cross-connect architecture 

• Exchange connectivity design 

• Strong understanding of modern low latency hardware platforms, NICs, FPGA-enabled environments, and packet processing optimization. 

• Advanced Linux systems engineering expertise, particularly: 

• RHEL&Kernel tuning 

• CPU pinning and isolation 

• IRQ balancing 

• NUMA optimization 

• DPDK/XDP/kernel bypass technologies 

• Deterministic systems performance tuning 

• Experience designing resilient infrastructure across colocation facilities and large-scale enterprise data centers. 

• Strong knowledge of automation and infrastructure engineering practices using Python, Ansible, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code methodologies. 

• Experience managing hardware procurement, vendor negotiations, colocation buildouts, and telecom contracts. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead globally distributed engineering teams in high-pressure, mission-critical environments. 

• Strong understanding of operational risk, resiliency, cybersecurity, and regulatory requirements within financial services. 

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills with ability to interact effectively with senior technology leadership, trading desks, and external partners.